Africa And Some World Problems

APR T-C-A

AND

SOME WORLD PROBLEMS

Vtf IVERSITY PRESS

AMEN HOUSE, E.G. 4

LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW

LEIPZIG NEWYORK TORONTO

MELBOURNE CAPETOWN BOMBAY

CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI

HUMPHREY MILFORD

PUBLISHER TO THE
UNIVERSITY

A F R I e A

AND
3OME WORLD PROBLEMS

INCLUDING

THE RHODES MEMORIAL LECTURES

DELIVERED IN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1929
BY

GENERAL J. C. SMUTS

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1930

Printed in Great Britain

PREFATORY NOTE

booklet consists of addresses delivered
during November 1929. The first address was
given before the Royal Scottish Geographical Society
at Edinburgh and Glasgow on 21 and 22 November.
The second, third, and fourth were the Rhodes
Memorial Lectures delivered in the Sheldonian
Theatre at Oxford on the 2, 9, and 16 November.
The fifth is a speech made at a meeting of the
League of Nations Union in the Guildhall, London,
on 14 November to celebrate the tenth anniversary
of the League. And the sixth was delivered as the
Sidgwick Memorial Lecture in Newnham College,
Cambridge, on 30 November.

J.C.S.

OXFORD

December 1929

CONTENTS

7INGSTONE AND AFTER i

II. AFRICAN SETTLEMENT .... 35

III. NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA .... 71

IV. WORLD-PEACE 105

V. FUTURE TASKS OF THE LEAGUE . . 139

VI. DEMOCRACY 149

INDEX 181

MAP OF CENTRAL AND SOUTH AFRICA . at end

1

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

ET me begin by thanking the Royal Scottish
Geographical Society of Edinburgh for their
kind invitation which has brought me here. I fear
I shall not be able to add appreciably to the geo-
graphical knowledge of such a nation of travellers as
the Scots. But at any rate I have the opportunity of
seeing Scotland again the Scots I see anywhere
and of revisiting this great city which did me such
signal honour in the years of the Great War. I have
come here partly to discharge this long-standing debt
of gratitude. The debt, however, goes beyond the
reception and the honours of twelve years ago. In
a sense it is not personal but national. For South
Africans can never forget, and will never forget, what
Scotland and Scots have done and meant for them.
South Africa owes you a very exceptional and special
debt for your great contribution to her development
and progress. It would be difficult to do adequate
justice to the work which Scotsmen have done in
the upbuilding of our young country. Your special
contribution has consisted not so much in your
wares and manufactures as in your manhood. You
have exported to us as indeed you have exported
so liberally to many other young countries your
greatest asset: your character, talent, genius. Your
national character, like your theology, has left an
ineffaceable impress on South Africa. It is often

4 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

difficult to know where the Scots end and the Dutch
begin. Between the English and the Dutch in South
Africa you have been a strong link, a bond of under-
standing and sympathy and good humour. Like St.
Paul, and probably from his Epistles, you have
learnt to be all things to all men ; and in a country of
sharp contrasts and keen bargainers like South
Africa you have been the honest broker who has
helped both, and not forgotten himself. For these
and other innumerable services we owe you a deep
debt of gratitude.

But there is one service above all others which you
have rendered South Africa, or rather let me say
Southern Africa: I mean your gift to us of David
Livingstone. Livingstone was not only our greatest
explorer, and the greatest explorer ever produced by
Scotland, he was also our greatest propagandist.
With Rhodes he was one of the two men who did
more in the past to spread the name and fame of
Southern Africa than probably any others. He taught
the world that our sub-continent existed, and his
plain unvarnished report seemed such wild romance
that Africa almost immediately became the Mecca of
the adventurous spirits from every part of the world.
Livingstone placed us in the limelight and we have
been there ever since. We are no longer the Dark
Continent. Beyond this superb advertisement which
he gave us, he made geographical discoveries which
have placed his name among the select few in that
class. He lifted the veil from Southern Africa, and
added more to the knowledge of her mysterious in-

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 5

terior than perhaps any other man has done. In
recognition of his work the great National Memorial
will be erected to his memory near the Victoria
Falls in the near future; and the few words I am
going to say to-day are largely intended to foreshadow
that event, to draw attention to it, and to set men
thinking once more of the great hero who gave his life
for knowledge: the great humanitarian who more
than any one else can claim the honour of having
abolished African slavery : the great Christian whose
character and example made the natives of Africa be-
lieve that the white men were gods and not men of
the same clay as themselves. The white man's pres-
tige in Africa is, alas, no longer what it was; but it
has proved the greatest moral force in the betterment
of Africa, and it was in a large measure due to the
enormous impression which Livingstone made on
the natives from one end of the sub-continent to the
other. You will remember the tribute which the hard
and cold Stanley paid to his character after having
lived with him in close intimacy for months in the
wilds. And you can imagine the impression which his
extraordinarily noble personality must have made on
the simple African savages.

*A character', says Stanley, 'that I venerated, that called
forth all my enthusiasm and sincerest admiration. You may
take any point in Dr. Livingstone's character, and analyse it
carefully, and I will challenge any man to find a fault in it.
His religion is a constant, earnest, sincere practice. It is
neither demonstrative nor loud, but manifests itself in a
quiet practical way, and is always at work. In him religion
exhibits its loveliest features; it governs his conduct, not

6 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

only towards his servants, but towards the natives, the
bigoted Mahomedans, and all who come in contact with him.
Without it, Livingstone, with his ardent temperament, his
enthusiasm, his high spirit and courage, must have become
uncompanionable and a hard master. Religion has tamed
him and made him a Christian gentleman, the most com-
panionable of men and indulgent of masters.' I

It has always been to me a source of regret that he
fell out with the Transvaal Boers and never had a
good word to say about them. I once took the oppor-
tunity to discuss the matter with President Kruger,
and his explanation of the differences which arose
between the Boers and Livingstone was that Gordon
Gumming another of your errant countrymen
had supplied the border tribes with rifles and am-
munition in exchange for ivory, and that the Boers,
finding the natives armed, concluded erroneously
that Livingstone had done so, and treated him ac-
cordingly. For this rough treatment I made some
small amends after sixty years when I was a Transvaal
Minister, and the remains of Livingstone's mission
station at Mabotsa were discovered in the Transvaal.
I had the ruins restored as far as possible, and fenced
in, and put in charge of the local native chief to look
after and care for: in that way a record is still pre-
served of the place where he spent two happy years
with his bride, Mary Moffat. After that small atten-
tion and this lecture I hope his implacable spirit
against my people will at last relent.

On the ist of June 1849 Livingstone set forth

1 How I found Livingstone, pp. 430, 434.

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 7

from his Bechuana mission station on that career of
discovery which was to carry him to Lake Ngami in
that year, and ultimately to the glorious end on Lake
Bangweolo twenty-four years after. Before we pro-
ceed to look at his work, let us pause and ask what
was then known of the interior of Africa. Of the
interior of North Africa our very scanty knowledge at
that time was almost entirely due to the amazing
journeys in the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth centuries of three other Scotsmen : Mungo
Park, who travelled and was eventually killed in the
region of the Upper Niger ; Laing, who crossed the
Sahara from Tripoli to Timbuktu and was killed
by the Touarek of the Sahara; and Bruce, who
explored in the region of Abyssinia and the Blue Nile.
At the same time that Livingstone started in the
south, Henry Earth started from Tripoli across the
Sahara, discovered Lake Chad, explored the sur-
rounding territories and rivers, and then marched
through Hausaland to the Niger; whence, after
further amazing travels he turned back to Tripoli and
England. His great discoveries, recorded in five
volumes, place him in the very front rank of African
travellers. On the East Coast the missionaries Krapf
and Rebmann were exploring the country behind
Mombasa, and in 1848 first saw Kilimanjaro and, in
the following year, Mount Kenya ; while they heard
vague rumours of the great lakes farther west, and
there was the ancient, still vaguer rumour of the
Mountains of the Moon in the interior. In South-
West Africa Francis Galton and Andersson the

8 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

latter to become famous for his subsequent Kalahari
travels were at that time exploring the country
behind Walfish Bay, without, however, getting as
far as Lake Ngami. This, little as it is, was in sub-
stance the extent of our knowledge of the interior
of Africa when Livingstone started on his first
journey. The vast Congo basin was a sealed book,
Eastern and Central Africa with its lakes and vol-
canoes, its rift valleys and rivers, was quite unknown ;
the Zambesi was known to the Portuguese as far as
Tete, and there was some vague knowledge through
Jesuit missionaries of Mashonaland with its kingdom
of Monomotapa, its gold mines, and its ancient ruins.
The map of the African interior still looked like a
picture of a menagerie rather than a piece of geography .
It is strange to think that eighty years ago this was
still the extent of our knowledge of the interior of
Africa apart from the territory occupied by whites
in the south, and Egypt and the Mediterranean
regions of the north. Thirty years after, a revolution
in our knowledge of African geography had been
brought about ; except for details the vast framework
of its lakes, its rivers, and its mountain systems was
fully known. The work in Southern and South-
central Africa was done almost single-handed and
with the slenderest resources by Livingstone, while
to the north of him a whole array of geographical
genius, equipped in many cases on a lavish scale, was
carrying on the great work.

Let us look for a moment at the steps in Living-
stone's explorations and discoveries. He had laid the

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 9

foundations of his future task by acquiring the rudi-
ments of a scientific training at Glasgow, by learning
the accurate use of the necessary instruments for
taking the latitude and longitude of places, and by
eight years of assiduous study, as a missionary in-
Bechuanaland, of the native languages and customs
and the native mentality. He was naturally very ob-
servant and careful in his use of language and descrip-
tions of what he saw. The result was that his books,
apart from his geographical discoveries and their
interest as a great traveller's story, were mines of
accurate information. Professor Passarge, the Leipzig
geographer and geologist who spent some time in the
investigation of the geology of the Kalahari, places
him first in importance of all Kalahari explorers, and
says in his great work 1 on that region that he had learnt
from extensive experience to be very careful in differ-
ing from any observation or statement of fact made by
Livingstone. Of very few travellers can the same be
said. All Livingstone's books are full of observations
on anthropology, natural history, geography, and
geology, which add greatly to their value and interest
and give him a place apart among those African ex-
plorers who were not, like Schweinfurth and others,
scientific specialists. Even towards the end, when he
was racked with disease and suffering almost un-
bearable torture from dysentery as well as downright
starvation, we find him noting down meticulously in
his diaries the many curious scientific observations
which he continued to make.

3404.4

1 Das Kalahari, 1904.

c

io LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

With this endowment and equipment, with a great
liking for the wilds and the natives, and a passion for
opening up the continent to civilization, he set forth
in 1849 on his great adventure. With Oswell and
Murray he reached Lake Ngami in the heart of the
Kalahari that year; and in 1851, accompanied by his
wife and children and Oswell, he reached the Zam-
besi at Sesheke some forty miles above the Falls
which, however, he did not see till four years later.
The dangers of malaria, which he now first began to
realize, and a sense of the magnitude of the task which
lay before him, made him now take his family back to
Cape Town and dispatch them to England. In June
""1852 he was again on the Zambesi, and proceeded to
explore the intricate river systems of the Zambesi and
the Kwando rivers with their ramified connexions.
The whole region is so flat that in the rainy season one
can go backwards and forwards from one river to the
other by innumerable channels, and the direction of
the flow depends on the locality where the rain hap-
pens to fall, so that there is the confusing appearance
of the water flowing in one direction at one time and
in the opposite direction at another. He then moved
on, tracing the upper course of the Zambesi to near its
source, and then, having passed from the Zambesi to
the Congo basin, he travelled westwards across An-
gola, crossed the Kasai river and other considerable
tributaries of the Congo, and arrived at St. Paul de
Loando in 1854, after incredible exertions and hard-
ships, and looking on arrival more like a ghost than
a human being. After recuperating here among the

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER n

hospitable Portuguese, he returned with his small
band of faithful Makololo to the Zambesi, where in
the following year he reached the great Falls which he
called after the name of Que^nJVictoria. Then turn-
ing north-west, he discovered the Kafue river, and
following it arrived once more on the Zambesi ; thus
after the gravest dangers among warring native tribes
he reached the Portuguese fort at Tete, and proceeded
down the Zambesi to a point near its mouth. From
here he went by land to Quelimane on the coast,
having traversed the whole of southern tropical Africa
from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, and being
the first white man known to have done so. It was an
enormous achievement, great from whatever point of
view we look at it, but perhaps greatest in its effect on
the public opinion of the world. Livingstone not only
awakened Africa, but he did even more to awaken
Europe and America to the possibilities of discovery
in this mysterious continent. And from now onward
we find a new era of African exploration opening, and
all the most noted travellers hurrying on to attack
the problems of the interior of Africa.

Livingstone's original object in this exploration of
the Zambesi was to open up new communications to
the interior of Africa. He had, to his surprise, learnt
that here was not a desert as had been supposed, but
a huge fertile portion of the earth with a high rainfall,
great rivers, and high, healthy plateaux, which would
present magnificent opportunities for commerce and
development generally. The communications from
the Cape were, however, too long and too difficult

iz LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

through the arid regions which had to be crossed in
the south, and it was desirable to discover and develop
the new lines of approach. The Zambesi struck him
as the obvious new line of communication from the
east coast, and seemed to be the solution of the com-
mercial problem with which he had set out.

But this trek across Africa had opened his eyes to
a fresh problem, one which especially struck deep
chords in his humanitarian soul. On the Zambesi,
and more so as he travelled farther north through
Angola, he came across the ravages of the slave trade.
His missionary instinct fastened at once on to this
terrible situation which confronted him, and from
now on it was difficult to say whether his passion for
geographical discovery and commerce or his intense
desire for the suppression of the slave trade was his
strongest impelling motive. Henceforth he became
the most active and powerful opponent of the African
slave trade ; and his continuous and unremitting pro-
paganda against it was the main factor in its ultimate
undoing. When in the near future the great monu-
ment arises near the Falls, it will commemorate not
only the supreme African explorer, but also the
heroic liberator of Africa from its oldest scourge, the
curse which has probably caused more bloodshed and
suffering on that continent than any other in all its
history. Livingstone did not live to see the fruit of his
labours, and the last years of his life were spent, in the
region of the Lualaba river and in Tanganyika, amid
the horrors of this curse and its fierce expiring con-
vulsions. But if the question had been put to him

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 13

whether he would rather be the great African explorer
or its liberator from the slave trade, he would un-
hesitatingly have chosen the latter. Fate has willed
that he should be both : and it would be difficult to
conceive higher double honours for any man. To
Livingstone there did not come the happy conscious-
ness of success, but too often the sense of failure, of
labouring against impossible odds. What was worse,
he soon realized to his horror that he was unwittingly
a potent means of facilitating the slave trade. For he
discovered routes which the slave-traders had not
ventured to open up themselves, but which they
were only too eager to follow up in his wake. His
name and character proved not only a passport for
himself, but also for the enemies of his work, who
followed after him; and it was a tragedy that the
slave trade extended its terrible ravages on a large
scale, both on the Zambesi and in the area of the
Lakes, as a direct result of his discoveries. But in
spite of appearances the end was near, and within a
little more than a decade of Livingstone's death the
slave trade had been practically exterminated by the
Powers on the African continent. It is sad to think
that its last refuge is with the only independent
native states in Africa, and one can only hope
that the League of Nations, of which those States
are members, will not tolerate this situation much
longer.

To return now to our narrative of discovery. The
wonderful achievement of Livingstone had opened
the floodgates of African adventure. Burton and

i 4 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

Speke, who had already explored Somaliland in 1854,
were in 1856 sent by the Royal Geographical Society
of London to discover and explore the great lakes, of
which Krapf and Rebmann had brought rumours
from Mombasa. The journey proved epoch-making ;
they reached Lake Tanganyika and explored its
northern half, and Speke then pushed on to the
southern shore of Victoria Nyanza. Hurrying back
to England while Burton was still struck down with
illness, Speke induced the Royal Geographical
Society to send him once more to the lake which
he had discovered. With Grant he reached the
southern gulf of Victoria Nyanza, which bears his
name. Thence they proceeded northwards, struck
the Nile, where they were met and relieved by Sir
Samuel Baker, and returned by the Nile to Egypt.
It was a marvellous journey, but in the course of it
they had curiously missed the Albert Nyanza. Sir
Samuel Baker and his wife were at that time busy
exploring the Upper Nile, after having explored
Abyssinia and the Abyssinian tributaries of the Nile.
They (the Bakers) then proceeded south, and reached
the Nile in the Nyoro country, where they were
detained and suffered the most terrible hardships.
They also discovered Albert Nyanza and saw both
the entrance and the exit of the Nile into and out
of this lake. They then returned north to Gondokoro
and followed the route of the Nile back to Egypt in
1865, after having completed one of the most arduous
pieces of African exploration.

Meanwhile in 1859 Livingstone, now appointed

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 15

British Consul with government equipment and ac-
companied by another Scotsman, Dr., afterwards Sir,
John Kirk, had returned to the Zambesi, and was
experimenting on its suitability for steam navigation
with a view to opening up easier communications
with the interior. The main, and indeed insuperable,
obstacle proved to be the Kibebrassa rapids which he
had encountered on his previous journey. He re-
peatedly sailed up and explored the Shire river, which
is the biggest northern affluent of the Zambesi, and
here, too, encountered rapids, which he called after
Sir R. Murchison. To the east of the Shire he dis-
covered Lake Shirwa in most beautiful country among
the high Milanje mountains ; and in a subsequent trek
reached and discovered Lake Nyassa itself in Septem-
ber 1860. This lake and the surrounding country
made such an impression on Livingstone that he
thought the route of the lake would become the key to
South-central Africa. His views on the Zambesi route
were, however, undergoing a change. The rapids of
the Shire, the troubles of the slave trade, and the un-
favourable attitude of the Portuguese induced him to
look for an alternative route to the lake. After a rapid
visit up the Zambesi to the Falls and Sesheke to re-
patriate his faithful Makololo following, he returned to
the mouth of the Zambesi, and there found the Uni-
versities' Mission which had come to Nyassa on his
appeal. Before locating it on the lake, he proceeded
to explore the route of the Rovuma river, which lies
just to the north of the Portuguese territory, and
which he imagined rose from the high country north

16 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

of the lake, and outside of Portuguese territory.
Should this Rovuma route prove practicable for
navigation, his intention was to locate the mission
accordingly, to cut out the Portuguese and to adopt
the Rovuma instead of the Zambesi as the route to
the interior. His exploration of the Rovuma con-
vinced him that this was not possible; the river was
not navigable for any considerable distance, and it
rose in the high country to the south-east of the lake.
He then proceeded to settle the mission on the Shire ;
but it subsequently failed and had to be abandoned
because of the ravages and chaos created by the slave
trade. In the meantime Livingstone and Kirk had
gone forward to explore Lake Nyassa more fully;
they covered the whole length of the lake (September-
November, 1861), found the slave trade worse at its
northern end, and returned to the Zambesi, where his
wife was awaiting him. His joy was shortlived; first
came the news of the death of Bishop Mackenzie and
the failure of the Nyassa mission, and a little later
Mrs. Livingstone sickened of malaria and died
(27th April 1862). This heroic daughter of the Moffat
family was fittingly buried under an enormous baobab
tree at Shupanga on the Zambesi. The family has
continued to play a great part in South Africa, and one
member is now Prime Minister of Rhodesia. On
a renewed visit up the Shire Livingstone found the
country desolated by the slave trade. He became
convinced that there was nothing further to be done
there, and he felt relieved when shortly afterwards
his expedition was, probably at the instance of

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 17

Portugal, recalled by the British Government. Before
leaving he made one more exploring tour, this time
towards the west of Lake Nyassa, with the intention
of reaching a big lake to the far north-west of which
he had heard. This lake (Bangweolo) he did not
reach on this occasion, but he discovered it five years
later, and there, ultimately, the end came of all his
Herculean labours.

In 1866 Livingstone, now out of the government
as well as the mission service, and therefore entirely
on his own very slender resources, resumed the pro-
ject of reaching this mysterious Lake Bangweolo.
He travelled south-westwards from the Rovuma
river, then turned north-west from the southern end
of Lake Nyassa, and proceeded to the southern end of
Lake Tanganyika, from where he went first west and
then south to discover the mighty Luapula river and
Lakes Moero and Bangweolo in 1868. From there
he returned to Tanganyika, and in the depth of his
poverty was reduced to travelling in the train of some
friendly slave dealers. He travelled westward to the
Manyema country and reached Nyangwe on the
Lualaba, which was probably the centre and depot
of the slave trade, and where he saw the most
heartrending sights of its ravages. He was at this
time preoccupied with the problem of the ultimate
sources of the Nile, and was trying to find out
whether the Lualaba was the beginning of the
Nile or of the Congo. Its northerly course, which
he was told continued for a very long distance,
pointed to its connexion with the Nile; but there

3404.4

i8 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

was also the rumour that it finally turned west,
and this again pointed to a Congo connexion. To
solve this problem he might have to go farther north
to the Nile or to the west coast. Before proceeding
with his investigations, he was compelled by poverty
to return to Tanganyika, and there at Ujiji he was in
1872 found and relieved by H. M. Stanley, who had
been sent on a relief expedition by the New York
Herald. Stanley returned after re-equipping Living-
stone for his further march, and in August 1872 the
veteran was once more on the move. Instead of pro-
ceeding to the north to follow the course of the
Lualaba river, as one would expect, he turned south
in order first to test a story in Herodotus to the effect
that the ultimate source of the Nile is one of two conical
hills in Central Africa, which Livingstone identified
with two hills to the west of Lake Bangweolo. From
this point he then intended, after visiting the ancient
copper mines at Katanga, to turn north and test this
story as well as the true relationship of the Lualaba . It
was a wonderful undertaking for a man of sixty, with
a frame already worn out by excessive labours and
suffering from a most exhausting form of chronic
dysentery. But there burnt in him a light of the
spirit which nothing could quench. The whole of
this march for the next eight months was one long
agony. In November a severe rainy season set in
which laid the country through which he was march-
ing under water ; food was scarce, often unobtainable,
and the whole party was continually suffering from
starvation. The dysentery became worse with the

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 19

rough tare, and Livingstone was so weak that he had
often to be carried. In January 1873 he was once
more in the region of Lake Bangweolo. His condition
was pitiable and the plight of his party desperate.
Still he struggled on with indomitable courage. It is
impossible to read his journals at this time without
deep emotion. Although often scarcely conscious he
continued to push on; the men waded through a
country which resembled a lake ; while he was carried
in a fainting condition and suffered the intensest
agony, on the shoulders of his faithful Susi or Chumo.
The last entry on 2yth April reads : 'Knocked up quite,
and remain recover sent to buy milch goats.' This
was at Chitambo s village, Ilala, to the south of Lake
Bangweolo. There the end came in the early morning
of ist May 1873. His dead body was found kneeling
in prayer. His heart was buried there by his devoted
followers. His name and work will live for ever. Ap-
parently down and out, he had achieved and left
a work whose results were secure beyond all failure.
While his body was being carried to the coast it was
met by Lt. Lovett Cameron, who had been sent on
a relief expedition by the Royal Geographical Society
of London. Cameron rightly decided to push on,
crossed Tanganyika and the Lualaba, then turned
south-west through the somewhat advanced country
of the chief Mwata Yanvo in Portuguese Angola, and
finally arrived at Benguella in November 1875, a f ter
one of the historic marches across Africa. In an
account of African exploration I was surprised to find
the statement that Lovett Cameron was 'the first

20 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

Englishman to cross Africa'. This appears to be a fact
in spite of his suspiciously Scotch name.

To go back for a moment: In the sixties three
German travellers explored northern Africa Dr.
Rohlfs the western Sahara and the regions south of it
to the Gulf of Guinea; Dr. Nachtigal the eastern
Sahara and the regions to the south of it, including
Lake Chad, Bagirmi, Wadai, and Kordofan; Dr.
Schweinfurth, the Upper Nile and Nubia, the Bahr
el Ghazal, and the Monbuttoo country in the Welle
watershed of the Congo. I have not time to refer in
detail to their explorations. They rank among the
greatest of African travellers and were examples of
a new type of explorer, whose object was science
rather than merely geographical discovery. They
have left wonderful accounts of their work. Thus
the famous botanist Schweinfurth 's book called The
Heart of Africa is probably one of the most fascinating
accounts of African travel ever written. His descrip-
tion in it of the capital and court of King Munza of
the Monbuttoo cannibals is a rare masterpiece.

The same year that Cameron completed his journey
across Africa, Stanley, once more at the instance of
some enterprising newspapers, entered the lists of
African discovery and soon solved the problem of
the Lualaba river, which had troubled Livingstone
to the last. Moving from the East coast in 1875
he proceeded to the Lakes, circumnavigated both
Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika, then marched on
to the Lualaba, took to his boats and stuck to the
river resolutely in spite of the most enormous diffi-

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 21

culties, finally proving it to be the Upper Congo by
emerging by the Congo on the Atlantic. Great as
were the results of his expedition, they were surpassed
by his epoch-making journey twelve years later for
the relief of Emin Pasha in the Equatorial Sudan after
the Mahdi revolt, the death of Gordon, and the fall
of Khartoum. Starting up the Congo, Stanley pro-
ceeded to the junction of the Aruwimi river, and at
that point entered the unknown, almost impenetrable
African rain forest, through which he kept cutting
his way for the next five months. He encountered
incredible difficulties, but finally succeeded in reach-
ing Albert Nyanza, relieved Emin and took him
and his companions to the East coast, discovering
en route Mount Ruwenzori, or the Mountains of the
Moon, Lake Albert Edward, and the Semliki river
flowing from it into Albert Nyanza, and thus tracing
the westernmost sources of the Nile. His experiences
in the forest and his minor discoveries on this great
expedition were also of intense interest. Indeed
nothing so striking had been seen in African travel,
and the fate of his rearguard combined with the
success of his vanguard to make this closing expedi-
tion the most spectacular in all African explorations.
The fates of Livingstone and Stanley are curiously
linked in the story of African exploration, and it was
Stanley's lot to complete the work of Livingstone in
respect both of discovery and the suppression of
the slave trade. In fame too, they stand out above
all other African travellers. In actual geographical
results the work of Stanley probably ranks first of all

22 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

African discoverers. And if on the whole I feel in-
clined to award the palm to Livingstone, it is because
he was the first, the pioneer of African discovery, and
because he achieved his colossal results single-handed,
with no material equipment, and, as it were, by sheer
moral force. The expeditions of Stanley were
equipped on a lavish scale, and resembled and were
carried on mostly like military expeditions. The two
men were so different that it is difficult even to com-
pare them, but I should say that in Livingstone's
place and with the equipment with which Living-
stone achieved his marvellous results, Stanley would
in all probability have done worse.

The world-wide impression and interest caused by
the tragic death of Livingstone in the swamps of
Lake Bangweolo, the return of the Cameron expedi-
tion, and the subsequent spectacular success of the
first Congo exploration of Stanley combined to lead
to a new situation in Africa. King Leopold of the
Belgians was the first in the field with an inter-
national African Congress at Brussels, which added
to the growing excitement. African exploration was
rapidly leading to a new phase which was of a
political character. In fact the train was being laid
for that scramble for Africa, which was to result a few
years afterwards in the partition of Africa among the
Powers. It soon became clear that King Leopold was
not acting merely in the general interests of science
and philanthropy, but of Belgium. Germany and
France were not slow to follow suit, and African
exploration was fast becoming a political game for

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 23

staking out national claims in Africa. There was a
sudden and almost romantic revival in the suppres-
sion of the slave trade. Where the British Navy had
hitherto borne the burden almost single-handed,
active interest began suddenly to be displayed by
the European Powers. The suppression of the slave
trade became a convenient cloak for territorial ambi-
tions and annexations. Thus evil often takes a hand
in furthering good. The annexationist ambitions of
States combined with the high humanitarian efforts
of Livingstone to lead to a rapid decline of this oldest
and most nefarious scourge of the continent. The
partition of Africa took a new turn in 1884; in the
following year the Berlin Conference prohibited the
slave trade and the supply of fire-arms to the natives
of Africa. By the end of the eighties and the begin-
ning of the nineties the Arabic slave power had col-
lapsed and the slave chiefs were in flight from the
continent. At Nyangwe on the Lualaba, where
Livingstone had been forced to witness the most
revolting slave outrages, their last stand was made
and their power was finally broken. Such is the
irony of history.

Besides the names I have mentioned, there is a long
and honourable roll of African exploration. I have
but touched on the most salient facts and features
and events, and I now pass on to consider some of the
humanitarian, political, and economic results of all
these vast labours, which have led, or rather one hopes
may eventually lead, to the redemption of Africa.

The partition of Africa, which had commenced

24 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

with the scramble of 1884, was completed in the
nineties; and as a result practically the whole of
Africa, with the exception of Abyssinia, passed under
white control. Portugal remained with her old
African colonies, but with their area extended from
the neighbourhood of the West and the East coasts
far into the interior. Belgium, through the astuteness
of King Leopold, had carved out the choicest slice of
the continent, to which in the nineties was added the
most valuable area of all, namely the Katanga. France,
Germany, and Great Britain each staked out large
and valuable territories and placed them under pro-
tected chartered companies. The marvellous roman-
tic era of exploration was followed by a period of
intensive exploitation. It became clear to the world
that the key to the future was held largely by the
tropics, that tropical products were not only essential
industrial requirements of a highly developed civiliza-
tion, but also promised to be equally valuable instru-
ments of world power. Cotton, sisal, rubber, vege-
table oils and fats, and the like, were the foundations
not only of industrial, but also of world power.
Millions of pounds were rapidly poured into the new
territories and development was forced in every
direction. Colonial expansion became a cardinal
item in the programme of some at least of the Powers.
It found forcible expression in the clamour for a
place in the sun, which helped to produce the men-
tality that led to the Great War. Africa, which to
Livingstone had been a high spiritual quest, and to
other discoverers an adventure of unsurpassed

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 25

romance, had finally become one of the apples of
discord between the Powers. The Morocco policy of
France led to compensations to Germany in the
Congo basin. Secret treaties which meant a reparti-
tion of large parts of Africa were projected. And then
the Great War came, the existing arrangements were
thrown into the melting-pot, and Africa once more
entered upon a new phase in her history of surprises.

The tramp of big armies was once more heard on
this continent. Where Livingstone had marched with
his tens, where Stanley had marched with his hun-
dreds, the military commanders marched with their
tens of thousands. My advance in the German East
campaign often followed for long distances the routes
of the great travellers whose exploits I have recounted.
As a boy I had read their books with burning interest
and intense longing to see those wonderful countries.
And when at last my opportunity came, it was under
circumstances such as no one could ever have fore-
seen in the wildest of dreams. The result of the War,
so far as Africa was concerned, was a repartition under
the Mandate system, which I had suggested as both
a check and an advance on the old policy of colonial
annexation. Germany lost her array of African
colonies and they went under mandates to France, to
some members of the British Empire, and in a lesser
degree to Belgium.

But to Africa the War meant something far more
serious than a fresh partition. Instead of the old pre-
war collaboration of Europe, which existed even in
spite of rivalries, Africa saw the European front, the

3404.4 p

26 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

front of European culture, broken, the European
Powers at war with each other, and the natives of
Africa enlisted in a great war between the whites.
The black manhood of Africa was involved in the war,
either as combatants or as porters and carriers. They
shared in and endured all the hardships of the
African campaigns, and the rude awakening has
opened an entirely new chapter in the history of
Africa. Africa has at last been roused from her his-
toric slumbers. The peoples of Africa are infected
with the vague unrest which has universally followed
the Great War. For better or worse the old Africa is
gone and the white races must face the new situation
which they have themselves created in this continent.
Africa is going to be one of the major problems of the
twentieth century, and the repercussions of that
problem on the rest of the world may be very far-
reaching yet. How far the African natives will be
able to go in the march on which they have started,
what equilibrium will be reached eventually between
their traditional system and the more complex
features of European civilization, no one can foretell.
Nor am I going to discuss these questions here to-
night. Some aspects of the great African problem I
am discussing in my lectures at Oxford. Here I only
mention the fact that we are confronted with a new
situation all over Africa, partly as a result of the
experiences through which the natives passed in the
Great War, and partly as the result of the rapidity
with which almost revolutionary changes have super-
vened on the old order in Africa.

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 27

The question of transport and communications
for the interior greatly preoccupied Livingstone as
we have seen. His favourite idea of developing the
Zambesi for transport to the interior has been aban-
doned, and, indeed, was abandoned by himself. But
other great rivers the Congo, and the Niger, in
addition to the Nile are to-day among the principal
means of communication on the continent. Railway
communications have been opened up on a large
scale. With the exception of two short breaks, one
between Victoria and Albert Nyanza, and the other
beyond Albert Nyanza to Rejaf, it is to-day possible
to pass uninterruptedly by rail and river steamer
from Capetown to Alexandria. From the East coast,
railway lines pierce the interior, not only in the
Union of South Africa, but in Rhodesia, in Tangan-
yika, in Kenya, and from the Red Sea in Egypt and
Abyssinia. From the West coast, railway lines cut
into the interior in South-west Africa, in Angola, in
Nigeria, in Sierra Leone, in Senegal, and other parts
of North-west Africa. Next year the Lobito Bay
railway will reach the Katanga copper-mines, while
another from Bukama to Luebo (or Francqui)
already connects these important mines with the
navigable Kasai in the Congo basin, thus giving
continuous railway communication for 3,300 miles
from Cape Town to Francqui. Most ambitious of all,
a railway has been projected to connect within the
next decade the French territories on the Mediter-
ranean across the Sahara with Timbuktu on the
Niger. Motor transport is already beginning to re-

28 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

place camel transport along this route. Motor trans-
port moves freely across the sandy Kalahari, along
routes which were impossible for the ox-wagon in
Livingstone's time. A so-called all-weather motor-
road exists between South Africa and the British
colonies under the Equator. To-day one can move
easily and freely across Africa in a comparatively
short time, whereas a generation ago the venture-
some traveller organized elaborate safaris, took years
and incurred grave difficulties and dangers in crossing
the continent, and became famous when successful.
Movement in almost all directions across the con-
tinent is becoming usual, and is breaking down very
rapidly what remains of the old tribal divisions and
partitions on the continent. The effect of all this on
African development and on native mentality can be
imagined.

Another potent factor for change and progress is
mining in Southern Africa. The southern portion of
the continent is exceptionally rich in minerals and has
been a mining area from time immemorial, so much
so that prospecting in Southern Africa often means
looking for ancient disused mines. Through mining
it is therefore susceptible of very rapid development.
There is no doubt that mining is the most effective
means of rapid development in a new country. A
large mining and trading population is attracted, and
local markets are developed which again call for a
farming population. In the following lecture I shall
stress the importance of diamond and gold mining
in the development of the old Cape Colony and the

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 29

Transvaal. But for the discovery of rich mines the
history of South Africa would have been very dif-
ferent from what it has been during the last half-
century. Now in the heart of Southern Africa
immense copper-fields have been discovered and
are being opened up in the Katanga and Northern
Rhodesia. In the countries where the lonely Living-
stone wandered, not far from the lake where he died, a
vast network of mines is arising, the effect of which on
the future of African development must be immense.
Engineers calculate that in Northern Rhodesia alone
ten million tons of ore will be treated annually within
the next ten years, with a probable annual yield of
250,000 tons of copper, which eventually may be
doubled. The Katanga copper mines just across the
border already produce over 100,000 tons of copper
per annum, and big extensions are contemplated.
This will mean a large white mining population in
the heart of Africa, and this again will bring about
agricultural settlement on a large scale on the fertile
highlands of Eastern Africa. A great labour force
will have to be recruited from the Congo, Northern
Rhodesia, Angola, and Nyassaland to do the rough
mining work. What the Witwatersrand has meant
farther south, that this copper-field may come to
mean for the development of South-central Africa.
It is therefore not difficult to appreciate that great
changes are coming and that the old order in
Southern Africa is definitely going. The new situa-
tion will present difficult social and political pro-
blems of the contact between European civilization

30 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

and native culture, which will tax the statesmanship
of this and the coming generations to the full.
There will be no infallible rule or code to follow.
We shall have to be guided by experience; we
shall have to hammer out solutions as we go along.
Let those who watch our experiments from afar bear
in mind that in Africa we are facing the most per-
plexing racial situation which has ever been faced in
the world. We can no longer follow the path of
repression which formerly would have commended
itself wherever a superior culture came in contact
with a lower, more primitive. We cannot mix the
two races, for that means debasement of the higher
race and culture.

The future in Africa is to those peoples who, like
the British and the Dutch, have steadfastly en-
deavoured to be loyal to their racial and cultural
ideals as a European community. But if the extremes
of repression and miscegenation are both excluded,
we are left with a problem in racial contact between
advanced Europeans and primitive Africans which is
not only novel, but also most complex, and in which
no guidance can be derived from the past experience
of the world. The superior Aryans, when they
settled in India among a lower, more primitive in-
digenous population, built up an elaborate caste
system for their own racial and cultural protection.
But the Indian caste system would not be possible
under modern conditions, and in any case it would be
a system impossible for Europeans with their ideals
of life. Europeans in Africa who mean to be faithful

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 31

to themselves and their traditions therefore have to
face a situation, as novel and difficult as any that has
ever confronted mankind. Africa will indeed apply
the severest possible test to our European system
with its ethical Christian ideals. I wish you to ap-
preciate the magnitude of the task on which we are
engaged in Africa. A grand experiment in racial and
cultural contacts is being tried and tested out, which
is fraught with enormous issues for the future of
our civilization. If black and white in Africa, while
faithful to themselves, can manage to evolve a plan
according to which they can jointly develop the
resources of this continent, a great service will be
rendered for the future of the human race.

I have stressed the mining development in Southern
Africa ; an even more important agricultural advance
is being made farther north throughout Central
Africa. The external trade of British West Africa
alone amounts to about 60 million per annum, and
that of British East Africa from Uganda to Northern
Rhodesia amounts to something under 30 million.
These figures show what an advance has already been
made in the short number of years since these ter-
ritories settled down under white rule. In countries
where practically no foreign trade existed a genera-
tion ago, where chiefs and people alike begged for
hongo from passing travellers and explorers, where
beads and the like represented the medium of ex-
change, we have to-day settled communities with
great productive power, and with organized govern-
ments which they maintain. The figures I have just

32 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

mentioned refer only to the British possessions, and
the total for Africa, apart from South Africa and the
Mediterranean countries, is very much larger. Yet in
Livingstone's day they were mostly terra incognita,
with a trade which was practically negligible apart
from slavery.

People in this country have little conception of the
great development which has already taken place in
British Africa in little more than one generation, or
of the greater developments that are ahead. It is
probable that in another generation British Africa
may, with wise handling and proper stimulus, be-
come as important a factor for British trade as India
itself. There will be immense tropical production,
and there will be a corresponding market for manu-
factures. Both from a humanitarian and a commer-
cial point of view Africa deserves the close attention
and steady encouragement of the Governments con-
cerned.

I have mentioned the set-back to the Universities'
Mission at Nyassa in the sixties. The failure was
only apparent and was shortlived. The mission, in
which Livingstone was so deeply interested, was
almost immediately restarted from Zanzibar as its
base, and it has within the last half century achieved
an outstanding record of success. Its example has
been followed by many other missionary bodies in
all parts of Africa. It is difficult to conceive what
Africa would have been without the civilizing effects
of the Christian missions. Mistakes have been made.
But the magnitude of the real service is out of all

LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER 33

comparison to those incidental mistakes. Missionary
enterprise, with its universal Christian message, and
its vast educative and civilizing effort, is and remains
the greatest and most powerful influence for good
in Africa.

The missionary, the trader, the traveller, the rail-
road builder, the labour recruiter, and the soldier
have wrought vast changes in Africa since Living-
stone's day. He was the first, the greatest, and the
most beneficent of the new forces for change and pro-
gress. Africa is to-day on the move in all directions
and its ancient quietude is profoundly disturbed.
Yet one hopes that whatever developments may be in
store for it, it will preserve some of the old character-
istics which have constituted its perennial charm in
the past. As long as Africans remain Africans, the
happy song and the dance will continue to brighten
the villages of Africa; that wonderful wild music,
with instruments wilder still, will continue to make its
peculiar appeal. The children of nature will continue
to enjoy the simple joys of village life, and in their
sunshine the gloom and the stern temper of colder
Europe will never prevail. Sensuous paganism will
always temper the ethical imperative, and religion
even at its best will still be of the earth, earthy. And
beyond the human inhabitants there will remain, one
hopes for centuries to come, the wild animals which
make this continent so attractive to the lover of
nature. I look forward to the time when the rage for
destruction will have disappeared, when the senseless
slaughter of the wild fauna will be as criminal and

3404.4

34 LIVINGSTONE AND AFTER

contrary to public opinion as cruelty to humans, and
when those who love the wilds and their shy denizens
and intimate ways will come from all parts of the
earth to find peace and refreshment in Africa. In
the stress and strain of civilization, the nervous ten-
sion of high culture and the friction of our industrial
system, Africa will be a place of refuge, a temple set
apart where the human spirit can once more practise
nature worship, and enjoy peace and quietude.

Africa in spite of all change will still remain Africa,
and its most distinctive features among the continents
will continue to be its untamed wildness, its aloofness
and solitude, and its mysterious, eerie, brooding spirit.

II

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

I AM deeply sensible of the honour which Oxford
University and the Rhodes Trustees have done
me by inviting me to deliver the Rhodes Memorial
Lectures. A previous invitation I had felt bound to
decline, on the plea of pressing public duty. But
when, after my recent defeat in the South African
elections, the invitation was kindly renewed, I was
left with no plausible excuse for not accepting the
embarrassing honour. And so here I am to-day, a
working politician, strange to your academic world,
facing an audience accustomed to a very different
bill of fare from that which I am able to place before
you. My distinguished predecessors in this lecture-
ship make my position even more unenviable. Sir
Robert Borden was an Elder Statesman of the Em-
pire who could discuss with expert skill its recent
transformations in which he had played a leading
part. His leisure and retirement from politics made
him almost an Olympian in the realm of constitution-
making on which he addressed you. He was followed
by two famous scholars who could speak to you from
an abundance of leisured study and meditation.
How different is my position! I come to you with
the marks of the battle and the dust of the fray still
fresh upon me, with little opportunity for prepara-
tion, and with no experience at all in handling
academic audiences. 1 pray for your kind indul-

38 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

gence. Remember the case of Rhodes, who, though
not a lecturer himself, was in this Foundation the
maker of lecturers. He was not a scholar, he had
no leisure or inclination for academic pursuits;
his haunts were the highways of the world. And
yet you have accepted him as one of the Founders.
He was a politician in active practice, a financier
up to all the tricks of the trade, a man of the
world, far away from the world of scholarship.
But he had a priceless faculty of imagination, of
vision, of seeing the greater plan into which the
details of his working life and his daily task fitted.
And so from mere politics and finance he evolved the
larger policies, he drew the inspiration of the larger
visions, which will remain when his finance and his
politics have been long forgotten. My qualification
as a Rhodes lecturer is that I am, like him, an active
politician, that like him I am an African whose life-
work has lain in the same field of African policies as
his lay.

On this ground I claim to have some right to speak
to you on the larger policies for which Rhodes stood.
Other lecturers may have to go far afield in search of
suitable subjects for their discourse. I am going to
speak to you on the ideas and policies with which
Rhodes 's name is for ever inseparably associated.
Those ideas and policies have not grown old or stale
with time; on the contrary, they are to-day more
alive than ever before. It is ever the hall-mark of
genius to initiate points of view which are not a flash
in the pan, but burn with a steady brilliance, to launch

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 39

ideas whose fruitfulness increases with time and
which thus carry their own immortality. I was a
young man fighting in the Boer War when Rhodes
passed away twenty-seven years ago. My whole
working life since then has been continuously occu-
pied with the same sort of questions which governed
his thought the Union of South Africa, the progress
of European civilization on the African continent, the
relations between white and black in that civilization,
the promotion of world peace through better under-
standing between the leading nations of the world.
Of these questions one the Union of South Africa
has been happily solved. The others are in process of
solution, or still await solution, and are to-day more
important than they were in Rhodes 's time. I shall
in these lectures deal with these questions of African
settlement, Native Policy in Africa, and World Peace ;
and I begin to-day with African settlement.

How keen Rhodes was on the settlement of a Euro-
pean population in the undeveloped spaces to the
north of Cape Colony and the Transvaal is shown by
the tremendous efforts he made to acquire and settle
Rhodesia. To this end he laboured and fought for
years, he plotted and schemed, he spent his money
like water, and he risked his reputation and his life.
The original Charter for Rhodesia covered Nyassa-
land also, for the administration of which he willingly
paid. And in the end he won through. The settle-
ment of a growing prosperous white people within
the tropics, which is now in its second generation, is
proof that his instinct was right, and that his policy

40 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

of * homes, more homes' on the veld was no mere
chimera. Southern and Northern Rhodesia, march-
ing far north into the tropics, with a thriving popula-
tion in ever-increasing numbers, has completely
justified his dream of a European State in tropical
Africa. But his vision and his work were not limited
to the Rhodesias. To him they were but the free
passage to the farther north, the open door for a
civilization from the south which would ultimately
link up with the lands of the Mediterranean. The
formula of 'Cape to Cairo' summed up in a phrase
this northern policy.

Let me pause for a moment to refer to a criticism
sometimes made of this settlement policy of Rhodes.
It has been said that settlement was not really his ob-
ject. He occupied Rhodesia in order to possess and
work its mines and minerals. The declared settle-
ment policy was only a blind to cover his real thirst
for minerals. This charge is but an echo of another
charge often levelled at Rhodes in his lifetime. But
it will not stand examination. Money-making never
was an end in itself to Rhodes, but always a means
to the attainment of his ends. Money literally was
the sinews of war to him. Whatever money he made
he spent most lavishly to prosecute the larger ob-
jectives he had in view. His trust deed for de Beers,
which made it possible to use the profits from the
Kimberley mines to finance the opening up of
Rhodesia, is conclusive proof of that fact. Rhodes
aimed both at the settlement of Rhodesia and at the
exploitation of its mineral resources. The one was

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 41

necessary to the other. Without mines to attract
whites, there would not be the settlers to settle nor
the means to settle them with. That was a lesson
which Rhodes had learnt from the history of South
Africa and other countries. The gold rushes to
California in the mid-nineteenth century had given
western America its great start and launched it on
its career of agricultural expansion. Similarly, the
diamond rush to Kimberley in the seventies and the
gold rush to Johannesburg in the eighties had revolu-
tionized economic conditions in South Africa. Before
the first of these rushes the white population of
South Africa was 300,000. After the second of these
rushes at the end of the Boer War the white popula-
tion had risen to 1,200,000. In one generation it had
quadrupled as a result of the discoveries of diamonds
and gold. Mining not only attracted people by itself;
it stimulated every other industry, and farming most
of all. It created a local market for the agricultural
and pastoral industries and thereby led to the rapid
settlement and effective exploitation of the land. In
Rhodesia, too, the mines have been the backbone of
the development and settlement of the country. One
is interested to see almost every town in that young
country settled on a mine. Rhodes was well aware
from his own experience that mining is the most
potent agency for the settlement of a country. He
therefore welcomed mining both for itself and for
what it led to in the way of general development.

It is not unreasonable to expect that mining will
continue to play a great part in the future settlement

3404.4

42 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

and development of Africa. Southern Africa is
beyond doubt one of the most highly mineralized
areas of the world. Its gold mines have apparently
been worked from antiquity, and must in ancient
times have supported a very large population and a
much higher civilization than it has known up to our
own times. It has not only unique gold and diamond
deposits. It has enormous coal and iron deposits;
it has probably the largest copper deposits in the
world. And it contains in great abundance those base
minerals which are used for hardening iron and steel
and are therefore of the greatest industrial impor-
tance. The discovery and exploitation of these unique
resources will continue to attract and support a large
European as well as give employment to a far
larger native population. And the African countries
which have the most promising prospects from the
mineral point of view will outstrip the others in
population, in development, and in economic im-
portance. The discovery of gold raised the Trans-
vaal in one generation from the most backward
to the foremost state in South Africa. And the
same will happen again farther north. In the race
between the East African States the lead will pro-
bably soon be taken by Northern Rhodesia. This
Cinderella among African colonies is the lucky
possessor of enormous copper deposits, besides other
mineral resources which are only now beginning to
be scratched. It is not improbable that within the
next ten years Northern Rhodesia will have a mining
field second only to that of the Witwatersrand. What

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 43

that must mean for the development of Eastern Africa
it is not easy to imagine. In the high lands of the
Kafue and other areas there are also some of the
richest and most valuable lands for agricultural settle-
ment in all Africa. We should not be surprised to see
in Northern Rhodesia another Transvaal on a smaller
scale, with all that this will mean for the progress and
civilization of this continent. A large European com-
munity settled on the healthy high lands in the heart of
Africa, and forming not only a new centre but a fresh
support and stimulus for Western civilization through-
out vast surrounding areas, may well revolutionize
the whole outlook for the future. It may give an
opening for strengthening our civilization and re-
claiming Africa from barbarism such as has never
been dreamt of before. It is the very land where
Livingstone toiled his hardest and perished gloriously
in the end. What an act of historic justice it would be
if this land becomes the centre of the great African
Dominion which will realize his dream of civilization
and commerce in Africa and revolutionize the posi-
tion and prospects of civilization on this dark con-
tinent !

Rhodes's work for European settlement in Rho-
desia did not stand alone. Circumstances seemed
to favour his settlement policy farther north; the
idea of European settlement throughout Eastern
Africa seemed to find a ready response in high
official quarters. The British Government invited
and encouraged settlers to occupy British East
Africa, and built the Uganda railway in order to

44 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

facilitate this occupation. The German Government
further south copied this example, and proceeded
to settle a white population in the Usambaras and
on the slopes of Kilimanjaro and Meru Mountains
and elsewhere. To all appearance, the settlement
of a white population on the high lands of Eastern
Africa seemed not only to be the Rhodes policy,
but also the British and the German policy. More
recently still, after the conclusion of the Great
War, the British Government proceeded to establish
soldier settlements on most favourable terms in
Kenya, and apparently looked upon such settlements
as a satisfactory way of dealing with one of the post-
war problems on its hands. The ousting of German
rule from Tanganyika, the consolidation of British
rule from the borders of Abyssinia to the south of the
continent seemed to present the opportunity for a
strong forward movement in this policy of settling
the high lands of Eastern Africa, which stretch in an
unbroken belt, hundreds of miles broad, from Kenya
to South Africa. In spite of this, however, there is at
present a slackening of this policy. There is doubt
and hesitation. There is a slowing down at the very
time when there should be a determined move for-
ward. What is the explanation of this recent develop-
ment? There are several answers, and it is necessary
for us to review the position once more and so see
whether the policy of African settlement rests on a
secure and defensible foundation.

The root cause of this change of attitude is
entirely creditable. It is the humanitarian feeling

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 45

which has been on the increase since the Great War,
which sides with the under-dog, which produces the
policy of Africa for the Africans that is, for the
natives ; which holds that Africa is a black continent,
the home of the negro and negroid peoples, and that
it should remain such; that the whites have Europe
and America as their present and future homes, and
that, just as the whites do not dream of colonizing
yellow Asia, so they are not justified in intruding into
this natural and predestined home of the blacks and
of an indigenous native culture. This view was
forcibly expressed by Lord Olivier in 1919 when he
declared that 'settlements in Africa produce (as they
have done in all ages and all countries), first, slavery,
predial or domestic; second, compulsory or inden-
tured labour; third, the expropriation of natives from
the land in order to compel them to work for wages on
the estates; fourth, pressure on the natives to labour
for wages through direct or indirect taxation each of
which has in turn given rise to reactions of the
humanitarian conscience.' 1

Now, the answer to this form of argument is that it
condemns a policy which may be wise and sound in
itself, by pointing to the excesses and abuses to which
it leads. I do not deny that there have been these
abuses and that they have to be guarded against. I am
wholeheartedly opposed to each and all of the ten-
dencies which Lord Olivier sets out, and, I believe, so
are, probably, all fair-minded white settlers in Africa
to-day. They are not the policy, but the blots and

1 Contemp. Review, Jan. 1919.

46 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

excrescences on the policy. White settlement can
proceed in Africa without, and is all the better for
being without, the dubious aids of slavery or forced
or indentured labour, or labour taxes, or other forms
of labour compulsion. Our experience in South
Africa has definitely established that these expedients
to help out the white settler are not only unnecessary
but positively harmful. Slavery has definitely passed
away so far as the whites are concerned ; compulsory
or indentured labour was formerly in existence but
is now universally condemned, except for public
works in certain special cases. Depriving natives of
their land or of the land which is reasonably required
for their present or future needs should also be out of
the question, and in this respect white settlement
should not, and, as I shall just now show, need not,
conflict in any shape or form with the rights or needs
of the natives. With regard to taxes, a small tax in
the form of a hut or capitation tax is universally im-
posed on the natives as their contribution to the
maintenance of good government. As a general tax it
is fair and approved of by all native administrators,
nor is it resented by the natives whose customs pre-
scribe a contribution to the requirements of their
chiefs. But a special labour tax is not warranted and
is unnecessary. It has been repeatedly tried in South
Africa, notably by Mr. Rhodes in his celebrated
Glen Grey Act, and has as often had to be abandoned.
It takes the raw native some time to acquire the habit
of going out to work for the white employer. But as
his economic needs develop, and they develop fairly

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 47

rapidly, and as he learns the value of ready money, it
soon becomes habitual for him to spend part of his
time in white employment. South African experience
is decisive on this point. Even for those natives, for
instance, in the Transkeian Territories, who have
ample land for their own needs, it soon becomes
customary to go out to work for part of each year in
the mines or industries or the neighbouring agricul-
tural districts. No inducement is necessary beyond
their ordinary growing economic needs. Employ-
ment in European industries or with European
settlers soon becomes the regular routine, and the
natives are quite satisfied and happy to fall into this
routine of part-time employment. By temperament
they have not much initiative, and if left to them-
selves and their own tribal routine they do not
respond very well to the stimulus for progress. They
are naturally happy-go-lucky, and are not oppressed
with the stirrings of that divine discontent which have
made the European the most unhappy but the most
progressive of all humans. They are easily satisfied
and a very little goes a long way with them. As
workers they are slow, unintelligent, and essentially
imitative. They have little foresight and display little
forethought. But these very characteristics make
them take readily to a routine which is settled for
them by a white employer. And if they are well
treated they respond with that good temper and that
slow honest toil which makes them so easy to work
with and so acceptable to the white employer. For
thousands of years they have been accustomed to

48 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

domination by their chiefs, and therefore they
readily accept the firm handling, the lead, and the
mastery of the white employer. It fits in with their
character and their age-long training.

I may here add the valuable opinion of the Hilton
Young Commission :

'It is advantageous to the native to learn habits of regular
work and to gain practical experience of what can be achieved
by advanced methods of agriculture. In certain conditions
also natives may be able to get a larger economic return from
employment under Europeans than by working on their own
account. Moreover, in the early days of British administra-
tion in such countries as the Eastern and Central African
dependencies, an influx of European settlers with capital
may be of great assistance to the Government in starting a
process of economic development for the natives. Without
some external impetus at the beginning, there may be no
escape from a vicious circle. For while, on the one hand,
measures necessary to improve the standard of native agri-
culture, such as the provision of agricultural inspectors,
issues of seed, &c., cannot be undertaken by the Govern-
ment without revenue, on the other hand the necessary
revenue may not be available until some improvement in
agricultural production is brought about. The activities of
the settlers who have sufficient capital to carry them through
the early unproductive years may provide the necessary
impetus at the start.' 1

From all this it follows that the easiest, most
natural and obvious way to civilize the African native
is to give him decent white employment. White em-
ployment is his best school ; the gospel of labour is
the most salutary gospel for him. The civilization of

1 i, p. 64.

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 49

the African continent will be a vain dream apart from
white employment, without the leading hand of the
settler and the employer, away from the continuous
living contact with the actual example and the actual
practice of European industry and agriculture. The
civilization of Africa therefore calls for a definite
policy, the policy of European settlement, the estab-
lishment of a white community inside Africa w r hich
will form the steel framework of the whole ambitious
structure of African civilization. Without a large
European population as a continuous support and
guarantee of that civilization and as an ever-present
practical example and stimulus for the natives, I fear
that civilization will not go far and will not endure for
long. From the native point of view, therefore, just
as much as from the white or European point of view,
nay, even more from the native point of view, the
policy of African settlement is imperatively necessary.
I find in recent years a tendency to give primacy to
the native point of view, to place native interests first
in the scheme for African development. This appears
to be the attitude of the British Government in East
Africa, at any rate since 1923. This attitude again has
largely influenced the view of the various commis-
sions of inquiry which have studied these vexed
questions since 1923. Beyond that again is the
slogan 'Africa for the Africans'. The underlying
assumption of this view is that there is an essential
incompatibility between white and native interests,
that the promotion of white settlement must neces-
sarily or usually run counter to native rights and

3404.4

48 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

domination by their chiefs, and therefore they
readily accept the firm handling, the lead, and the
mastery of the white employer. It fits in with their
character and their age-long training.

I may here add the valuable opinion of the Hilton
Young Commission :

'It is advantageous to the native to learn habits of regular
work and to gain practical experience of what can be achieved
by advanced methods of agriculture. In certain conditions
also natives may be able to get a larger economic return from
employment under Europeans than by working on their own
account. Moreover, in the early days of British administra-
tion in such countries as the Eastern and Central African
dependencies, an influx of European settlers with capital
may be of great assistance to the Government in starting a
process of economic development for the natives. Without
some external impetus at the beginning, there may be no
escape from a vicious circle. For while, on the one hand,
measures necessary to improve the standard of native agri-
culture, such as the provision of agricultural inspectors,
issues of seed, &c., cannot be undertaken by the Govern-
ment without revenue, on the other hand the necessary
revenue may not be available until some improvement in
agricultural production is brought about. The activities of
the settlers who have sufficient capital to carry them through
the early unproductive years may provide the necessary
impetus at the start.' l

From all this it follows that the easiest, most
natural and obvious way to civilize the African native
is to give him decent white employment. White em-
ployment is his best school; the gospel of labour is
the most salutary gospel for him. The civilization of

1 i, p. 64.

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 49

the African continent will be a vain dream apart from
white employment, without the leading hand of the
settler and the employer, away from the continuous
living contact with the actual example and the actual
practice of European industry and agriculture. The
civilization of Africa therefore calls for a definite
policy, the policy of European settlement, the estab-
lishment of a white community inside Africa which
will form the steel framework of the whole ambitious
structure of African civilization. Without a large
European population as a continuous support and
guarantee of that civilization and as an ever-present
practical example and stimulus for the natives, I fear
that civilization will not go far and will not endure for
long. From the native point of view, therefore, just
as much as from the white or European point of view,
nay, even more from the native point of view, the
policy of African settlement is imperatively necessary.
I find in recent years a tendency to give primacy to
the native point of view, to place native interests first
in the scheme for African development. This appears
to be the attitude of the British Government in East
Africa, at any rate since 1923. This attitude again has
largely influenced the view of the various commis-
sions of inquiry which have studied these vexed
questions since 1923. Beyond that again is the
slogan 'Africa for the Africans'. The underlying
assumption of this view is that there is an essential
incompatibility between white and native interests,
that the promotion of white settlement must neces-
sarily or usually run counter to native rights and

3404.4

5 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

intfests, and that this encroachment can only be
prevented by calling a halt to the policy of white
settlement. My point is that, apart from abuses and
avoidable excrescences, there is no such inherent and
inevitable clash of interests between the two . If Africa
is to be civilized at all, if the heavy responsibility for
African civilization is not to be weakly renounced
and abandoned, the two will have to go together
in carrying the great burden. The native needs the
white man even more than the white man needs
the native; both are indeed necessary for the due
performance of the heavy task. As the Ormsby-Gore
Commission of 1924 said: 'In order to be pro-native
it is not necessary to be anti-white. To be in favour
of white settlement in such portions of Africa as are
climatically suitable for European homes, it is not
necessary to be anti-native. East Africa can only
progress economically and socially on the basis of full
and complete co-operation between all races.' l The
assumption of conflict and incompatibility is quite
wrong. White settlement along proper economic
lines and on proper ethical principles is what black
Africa most needs to-day for its development and
civilization. Granting in principle that native in-
terests should rank first, I still submit that white
settlement under proper safeguards remains the best
means to give effect to that priority. For without
large-scale permanent European settlement on this
continent the African mass will not be moved, the
sporadic attempts at civilization will pass, Africa

1 Cmd. 2387, p. 22.

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 51

may relapse to her historic and prehistoric slumbers,
and once more only mining holes and ruined forts
may ultimately remain to bear testimony to future
ages of what once was. We shall have a repetition
of Zimbabwe, and not an enduring impression on
and betterment of the peoples of this continent.

To my mind we shall make a great mistake if we
analyse the factors which bear upon African progress
and civilization and begin to assign separate and con-
trasted and competitive values to them. African pro-
gress is one whole organic problem and has to be
viewed as such. It is not really a case of natives first
or whites first, but of Africa first. Any policy which
(without manifest injustice or unfairness to any par-
ticular section) promotes most effectively African
development and civilization as a whole will at
the same time be most in the interest of the natives
as well as of the whites. That is good political
philosophy as well as sound common sense. If white
settlement in suitable and available climatic areas is,
as I contend, the most effective and expeditious
means of pushing forward the economic progress of
this continent, it will prove to be also the best means
of promoting native interests. In support of this
argument I may quote once more from the Report of
the Hilton Young Commission: 'It is quite certain,
for example that nothing like the present develop-
ment of the high lands of Kenya could have been
achieved without the introduction of a vigorous com-
munity of European settlers. While this develop-
ment has increased the wealth of the world it may at

52 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

the same time benefit the natives, since, on the best
European farms, the natives may receive, through
contact with their white masters, an education more
practical and more formative than anything that they
can be taught in the schools. Notwithstanding the
difficulties to which it gives rise, white settlement
provides a stimulus and example which may in the
long run promote and hasten the progress of the
natives.'

But white settlement is not the only way to bring
European influence to bear on native progress. I am
told that there is the missionary, and there is the
government civil servant who may supply the neces-
sary guidance without creating the crop of awkward
problems which white settlement usually produces.
Allow me a few words in reply to this argument.
Much as I admire the heroic spirit and the achieve-
ment of missionary enterprise, much as I respect the
contribution which the various African civil services
are making, I have no hesitation in saying that neither
separately nor together are they competent to play
the decisive part which is here assigned to white
settlement. The Christian missionary has, after a
century of ceaseless effort, not yet succeeded in mak-
ing any deep impression on Africa. Compared to the
enormous progress and still rapid spread of Moham-
medanism, his success is not very striking. These
words may sound cold and unsympathetic from
one who believes that the message of Christianity is
and remains the greatest inspiration of the human
race. But we must face facts. Mohammedanism is

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 53

already in solid and uncontested possession of Africa
from the Mediterranean to the tenth parallel of north
latitude, and to the south of it is spreading more
rapidly than Christianity. As a creed Mohammedan-
ism makes a very strong appeal to the native mind,
perhaps stronger than that of the highly ethical and
spiritual Christian religion. For these and other
reasons I should not think it fair to leave the fate of
European civilization to the missionary alone. Even
Livingstone did not think so. And the missionary
of the old type no longer responds to the needs of
Africa. For the African even less than for the Euro-
pean the teaching of the gospel is not enough. The
scientific and medical aspects of mission work are
steadily coming to the fore. I do not know whether
you have read the book of Professor Schweitzer,
The Edge of the Forest Primeval. It is a most
informative book, and it points the way to the
future trend of missionary work. The true ruler of
Africa to-day, as he has been for thousands of years
in the past, is the medicine man; and the only man
to fight him effectively is the scientific medicine man.
It is a matter for congratulation that our Christian
missions are more and more developing their medical
side. Medical mission is the mission for Africa. The
devils of Africa are witchcraft and disease, with
which only medical science can cope properly. You
get a true picture of African witchcraft from Paul
de Chaillu's book Equatorial Africa, which, although
written some seventy years ago, still remains one of
the most illuminating documents on native African

54 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

life. Christian missionaries will in future require a
thorough anthropological training in addition to a
general scientific medical equipment. But even so,
and however well-trained and well-equipped they
may be, the task of European civilization in Africa
will need the weight and the numbers and the con-
stant example of large white communities for its
progress and success.

Then there is the civil servant, the native adminis-
trator in Africa. His contribution to African progress
has been very great, and I have the deepest respect for
the human spirit of service, the incorruptible justice,
the patience and high efficiency which the African
civil services have brought to the performance of
their heavy task. And they can point to remarkable
success. In West Africa, for instance, the success
of the civil servant in guiding native agriculture
has been most striking. But recent developments
in West Africa and Uganda have not lasted long
enough to justify any sure conclusions. Cocoa,
palm-kernels, and cotton have indeed led to a
phenomenal economic development. But the real
test is still to come, when competition elsewhere,
under up-to-date methods and with scientific equip-
ment, may once more put the native producer
out of court. Already the wasteful character of
native production is beginning to be realized, and
misgivings are beginning to be felt about the
future. While paying our tribute to the native ad-
ministrator, guiding the native producer in the
wilds of Africa, we should be wise to suspend final

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 55

judgement for the present. Nor does experience else-
where justify a childlike faith in the official guidance
or control of industry. An English farmer or manu-
facturer would be horrified if he were advised to put
his faith in Government officials. The enterprise
and private initiative, the free experimentation and
taking of risks, which are essential to economic and
industrial success, are remote from the official routine
of the civil servant. The training of the civil servant
is to play for safety, to follow his book and stick to his
regulations. With him the fear of the inspector and
the auditor is the beginning of wisdom. He is not a
safe guide in the uncharted sea of industry: in
Africa perhaps even less than in Europe.

I now pass on to mention another objection which
is widely urged against white settlement in the
African tropics. It is said that such settlement must
encroach on the land which is needed for the natives,
that the inevitable tendency would be to oust the
natives from their ancestral lands, to restrict them to
limited reserves, and to cramp their future expansion.
This objection to white settlement is perhaps the one
which is most generally entertained and most honestly
felt, and it is the one in which there is the least sub-
stance. In the remarks I am now going to make I shall
confine myself to Eastern Africa. West Africa is ad-
mittedly a different situation. It is already fairly
thickly populated; it is climatically very unsuitable
for white settlement, which in consequence has never
been tried there. It is at present making fair progress
without any but official assistance, and in the interior

56 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

the negro population is already largely dominated and
controlled by a superior emigrant race of Hamitic
race and Moslem creed. In Eastern Africa I also
except from my argument the low-lying countries of
Uganda and Zanzibar, which are well populated and
have no large areas climatically suitable for white set-
tlement. We are left then with Kenya, Tanganyika,
Nyassaland, and Northern Rhodesia, all four of which
lie on the broad backbone of Eastern Africa and con-
tain an abundance of elevated lands above 4,000 ft.
high, in addition to immensely larger areas of fertile
lowlands and river valleys. These territories comprise
about a million square miles with a population of
about twelve million natives. These twelve millions
are mostly confined to the low-level areas, and even
there occupy only a comparatively small portion of the
land. Northern Rhodesia, which is more than double
the size of the British Isles, with a high rainfall and
a fertile soil, with much of its territory between 4,000
and 5,000 ft. above sea-level, and with a pleasant
climate, has little more than four natives to the
square mile perhaps the most promising territory
of Eastern Africa practically unoccupied. (Compare
this figure with 36-2 in Northern Nigeria or 223 in
British India.) The point that strikes the traveller
forcibly in these territories is the extreme sparseness
of the population and the large vacant areas every-
where stretching in all directions. The natives con-
gregate into settlements and villages and tribal areas,
leaving most of the land vacant. Leaving the natives
all the land which is occupied by them, or which may

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 57

become reasonably necessary for any future expan-
sion, there will still be left immense unapportioned
unoccupied areas. On one point there cannot be the
least doubt, and that is that even with an extensive
reservation of the high lands for white settlement
there will always be more than enough land for all
native purposes. Lord Lugard, after reviewing the
statistics of land and population in both East and
West Africa, concludes with the following observa-
tion :

'In all except the few very densely populated districts it
may be said that there is ample room for the legitimate needs
of alien (European) enterprise and development. In those
regions, whether in the East or in the West, where European
settlement is not possible, the demand for land by non-
natives is so limited, the area available is so large, and except
in limited districts, the native population is so small that,
whether the Government in theory owns the land or not, it is
not likely in practice that the native cultivator will find any
difficulty in obtaining all the land he needs.' 1

This opinion ought to satisfy even those who are
most solicitous for the interests of the natives. I shall
make one more quotation which will show that the
Governors of the East African territories, in con-
ference assembled in 1926, were agreed that the sparse
native population of East Africa not only leaves the
opening for white settlement in the high lands, but
also calls for such settlement, if the productive power
of those possessions is to be developed to the utmost :
'East Africa (they say) has two remarkable features which
1 Dual Mandate, p. 332.

3404.4 _

58 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

differentiate it greatly from British West Africa and from most
of the Empire's other tropical possessions. In the first place,
the population is very sparse by comparison with the extent
of the territory and its potentialities. In the second place,
large areas are by reason of their altitude suited climatically
for European colonization.

'It is generally admitted that European control in some
form is necessary to the welfare and development of the
African peoples. In no other way can peace be secured, im-
proper exploitation prevented, and the country developed to
anything like its full producing capacity. Where the popula-
tion is sufficiently numerous, the development can be carried
on under European administration and the produce marketed
by European merchants. This is the natural course of affairs
in West Africa. But in East Africa the population is not
sufficient to secure development in the same manner ; and if
the whole country were to be handed over to a policy of
native production alone under the guidance of European
administration, it would have to be constituted an economic
sanctuary so as to prevent the economic needs of the outside
world from forcing some other form of development upon it.
For these reasons East Africa has already been committed to
\\hat is known as the dual policy that is, to a combination of
non-native and native production.

'The broad contrast presented by natural conditions in
different parts of East Africa is illustrated by the difference
between Kenya and Uganda. In Uganda the population is
sufficient for native production on a very large scale, and the
climate is also unsuitable for European colonization. Uganda
is, therefore, developing broadly on the same lines as West
Africa. In the high lands of Kenya, on the other hand, the
native population is totally insufficient and unfitted to develop
the country. Its present scale of production would, therefore,
have been impossible unless the railway had been built
across the high lands and had brought in its train several
thousand European colonists. The contrast presented by

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 59

Kenya and Uganda in this respect may also be seen on a small
scale within the territory of Kenya alone. It is also to be
studied in Tanganyika.

'The dual policy, however, raises considerable problems
of its own. On the one hand, there is the obligation which
rests on every civilized government of raising the capacities
of its human subjects to their fullest expression ; on the other
there is the equally imperative duty of developing to the
utmost the power of its possessions.'

The prospect of white settlement has been ren-
dered easier for the future because native land rights
have been placed on a definite footing in most of
these territories. The governments of the majority of
these four territories have not been satisfied with the
enormous areas of land generally available for native
occupation, but have wisely taken the precaution to
reserve definitely for the future all such areas as the
natives may need for their future expansion, even
taking a very liberal view of such expansion. It is
unfortunately the fact that throughout much of the
African continent the native population is not increas-
ing, and in some parts, like Angola and the Congo, it
is definitely declining. The part of Africa in which
the native population has been increasing most rapidly
within the last fifty years is the Union of South
Africa, and that fact is a great tribute to the blessings
of a settled European government, to the favourable
economic conditions which render such an expansion
possible, and to the medical care taken and welfare
work carried on among the natives. It is certainly
a very significant fact that in that part of Africa where
a great white community exists alongside the natives

60 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

they have shown the greatest economic progress, the
largest increase, and the greatest advance in education
and civilization. The fact gives additional force to
my argument that the existence of a white community,
so far from being contrary to native interests, is in-
deed a stimulus and guarantee of native progress.
The mistake we made in South Africa in the past was
our failure in not reserving sufficient land for the
future needs of the rapidly increasing natives; and
the land problem which we have in consequence on
our hands is one of the most difficult. In all other
respects the white's man rule in South Africa has on
the whole been of immense benefit to the natives, and
the economic conditions of the natives in South Africa
are far in advance of anything existing anywhere
among African natives. There is an awakened public
conscience among the whites no less than among the
natives which will not silently tolerate injustice or
abuses, and which one hopes may yet come to form
an efficient safeguard for native interests. As a result
we have a constant ventilation of native grievances
which may give a wrong impression to those not
closely acquainted with conditions in South Africa.
The solid and incontrovertible fact remains that
native progress in South Africa under white rule has
been quite unprecedented, in spite of some regret-
table legislation which has recently found or is still
seeking its way to the statute book.

The last objection which has been raised to the
colonization of the tropics is based on reasons of
health. It is alleged that no permanent European

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 61

population can be maintained in the tropics; the
adults cannot work under tropical climatic conditions,
and thus become entirely dependent on black labour,
and in the end parasitical, while children cannot be
properly reared and brought up to healthy maturity.
Although the altitude mitigates the heat it is said to
produce a tendency to nervous excitement and strain.
How far this objection is valid it is difficult, if not
impossible, to say with our present limited know-
ledge. A white community has now been living
for almost a generation in the high lands of Kenya
and other parts of East Africa. In Rhodesia and
South- West Africa, which are well within the
tropics, white communities have been permanently
settled for the last thirty to thirty-five years; large
families are reared, and the school-children appear
strong and healthy, and no different from children
in the Union farther south. In the Transvaal, where
the Rand and much of the high veld lies at an altitude
of 5,000 to 6,000 ft., a large white population has been
living for the last forty years and more, without any
detriment to their health or physical fitness as a com-
munity. It is a fact that tropical and sub-tropical
parts of South Africa, which once were thought un-
healthy, now carry a large white population without
any harm to health. In other parts of the world
whites live permanently in the tropics at more or less
high altitudes. Australian experience in northern
Queensland is entirely favourable to white settlement
in the tropics. The Director of the Australian
Institute of Tropical Medicine, in a valuable report

62 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

called 'The White Man in the Tropics' (1925), makes

the following statement :

'Australia has the unique distinction of having bred up
during the last seventy years a large, resident, pure-blooded
white population under tropical conditions. For a con-
siderable time it has been more and more apparent that the
question of the possibility of establishing the white man in
tropical countries, possessing no large resident native popu-
lation, is infinitely more largely a question of preventive
medicine than a question of climate. Climatic adaptation is
certainly essential and must be assisted by habits and the
provision of environmental circumstances which are in con-
formity with conditions of climate and temperature. While
the attention of the world has been directed with incredulity
and amazement upon small colonies of Europeans striving to
obtain a footing in Brazil and Peru, Rhodesia, German South -
West Africa, and other localities, thousands of Australians
have been living in identical latitudes unaware that by so
doing they were controverting the old-established, generalized
dictum that the white man cannot persist under tropical
conditions.'

The human body is very adaptable, and Europeans
to-day thrive over the world under conditions very
different from those which reared them originally in
temperate Europe. In these matters we have not the
actual experience or statistics which would justify
definite conclusions. But the settlement of the high
lands of Eastern Africa must necessarily take genera-
tions to carry out fully, and there will be time enough
to watch the effects of the policy on the health and
physical character of the population, and to slow down
or speed up the process in accordance with the ex-
perience gained. The experiment, so far as it has

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 63

already progressed in Rhodesia and Kenya, seems to
justify the speeding up of the policy, and no undue
weight should be attached to this particular difficulty,
although the results of the policy, from the health
point of view, will have to be carefully watched. It is
even possible that just as in the biological world new
types are evolved in a new environment, so a new
human type may in time arise under the unusual
climatic conditions of Eastern Africa. The Transvaal
Boer already seems to be evolving into a type very
different from his Dutch Huguenot ancestors. The
human laboratory of Africa may yet produce strange
results, and time alone can show whether or not the
experiment was w r orth while in the interests of
humanity.

I have now dealt with some of the doubts and
difficulties which have been raised against w T hite
settlement in Eastern Africa, and I conclude with
the positive reasons favouring such a policy. The
British Government are to-day in control of a vast
portion of the African continent, and especially
of that part which, as far as evidence goes, appears
eminently suitable for European colonization. It
cannot simply sit on these vast assets and adopt a
policy of drift. It is a trustee for civilization; it must
see that the best use is made of this huge undeveloped
estate. And such a role especially befits the greatest
colonizing power the world has ever seen. The re-
sources of Eastern Africa must be developed and
exploited in a manner worthy of the traditions of
Great Britain. I have tried to show that the claim

64 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

of the natives to civilization, no less than the claim of
the world to the vigorous development of these
valuable tropical lands, calls for a great colonizing
effort on the part of Great Britain. The building up
of a strong white community to hold and develop the
healthy high lands which stretch from Rhodesia to
Kenya would be a magnificent response to this call.
Now that Great Britain holds these territories from
north to south in one unbroken chain, she has an
opportunity, greater even than Rhodes dreamt of, to
carry out her historic mission and establish in the
heart of the African continent and as a bulwark of
its future civilization another great European com-
munity. To me it seems the next critical step in the
evolution of our Commonwealth of Nations. These
fragments of Crown colonies should be put in the
way of becoming in time another important self-
governing unit of the Empire. There are here the
makings of something of far-reaching importance
for Africa, for the Empire, and for the world. But
a definite forward policy is wanted which will eventu-
ally lead to this consummation. The future only can
show whether this new group will be linked with the
Union in the south or whether it will follow lines of
its own in a new northern constellation. What is
urgently wanted is the settlement of a white popu-
lation, able and competent to undertake the task of
development, and finally to conquer and hold this
continent for European civilization.

There is another aspect of this question which I
am sure will not be lost sight of in these days. The

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 65

question of Empire migration bulks very large to-day,
and if I read the signs of the times aright, it will bulk
still larger in the years to come. Vast sums have
been rendered available by the British parliament
in order to promote the migration of the surplus
population of this country to the distant vacant
spaces of the Empire. The first measure of the new
Labour Government in its effort to grapple with
unemployment was a bill for subsidizing colonial
development. There is an urgent double call for
easing the pressure in the narrow, overcrowded
space at home, and for increasing it in the vast
undeveloped estate of the Empire abroad. Rhodes 's
policy of 'more homes' in the outer Empire is
to-day more urgent and important than ever before.
The time is more than ripe for a real forward policy
of migration and land settlement in the Empire.
There are great spaces to be filled up in the Domi-
nions, and the mother country and the Dominions
have an equal interest in the common task, which they
should share financially. They have not yet really
come to grips with it. But besides the Dominions
there is Africa calling. On this continent Great
Britain and the Empire have a more unique position
than in any other portion of the globe. There is land
enough and to spare for all present and future native
requirements. Over and above that there is a large
surplus of high land available for white settlers who
will not merely be white planters. The occupation of
these high lands by a settled European population
will, in the years to come, take away an appreciable

3404.4 K

66 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

number of your home population, and will provide
work for much larger numbers at home. By a
vigorous policy of settlement on these high lands
from south to north of Eastern Africa you will lay
the foundations of a great future Dominion of the
Empire. The cause of African civilization will be
advanced more securely by such a policy than by
any other that I can conceive. And thereby will be
achieved a stable and permanent civilization which
will give the native peoples of Africa that age-long
contact with a higher order of things which the excep-
tionally slow movement of the native specially calls
for. No flash in the pan of tropical exploitation will
really help the cause of African civilization. It will be
a slow, gradual schooling of peoples who have slum-
bered and stagnated since the dawn of time, and only
an ever-present, settled, permanent European order
can achieve that high end. The call of Africa for civi-
lization, the call of the world for tropical products,
and the call of these islands for migration and em-
ployment all combine to give very real force to the
case which I am making here to-day. From all these
points of view the time has come for a real major
advance, and I hope we shall not have long to wait
for it.

I conclude with two practical suggestions. My
first concerns the carrying out of the policy I have
advocated. It may have struck you that I have
avoided any direct discussion of the valuable Report
of the Hilton Young Commission on the organization
of Eastern Africa. I may point out that the recom-

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 67

mendations of that report deal with a temporary and
limited situation, with the next step which the poli-
tical and administrative structure in East Africa calls
for. My theme has been a different one not political
or administrative machinery, but the ultimate objec-
tives of our African policy. I am pleading not for
temporary measures but for the only sort of founda-
tion which will securely bear the weight of future
African development and civilization. A large white
population seems to be a sine qua non ; and in the long
run they, in concert with the natives, will settle their
own political arrangements. There is only one point
where my plea links on to the special recommenda-
tions of the Report. The Report recommends that
the East African territories shall be formed into two
groups, in each of which a High Commissioner shall
represent the Secretary of State for Colonies, and
control and direct certain common policies of the
group concerned such as native policy, customs,
transport, defence, and research. To these I would
add land settlement. If land settlement in Eastern
Africa were decided upon as a major policy, and men
of vision and wide sympathy and energy were ap-
pointed to be High Commissioners, the picture which
I have tried to sketch to-day will not be long in taking
shape. If the instrument is adequate to the task, the
results may be very far-reaching. Land settlement
should, however, be a common concerted policy and
should not be left to local idiosyncrasies. And along
with native policy it should be the most important
constructive task of the new High Commissioners.

68 AFRICAN SETTLEMENT

In the second place I would suggest that the essen-
tial unity of our African problems should be recog-
nized by instituting an Annual Conference for their
discussion, to which all the British African States
from Kenya to the Union of South Africa will send
delegates. It is too much to ask the young and im-
mature white communities in the north to bear the
whole weight of the vast issues upon which they are
now embarking, as well as to bear the brunt of con-
tinual differences with Downing Street. There is
great experience in the south which ought to be
rendered available for the north. For a century and
more South Africa has laboured and suffered over
the very problems which are beginning to agitate
the young communities in the north. This experience
should be helpful beyond the Union. Many mistakes
made in the south will then be avoided in the north,
many new mistakes threatening in the north will
appear as such in the light of South African experience.
Interest in and concern for native progress and wel-
fare are steadily growing in the Union of South
Africa, in spite of all appearances to the contrary.
Annual conferences by the leaders throughout Eastern
and South Africa will provide the necessary forum
for shaping common policies. And as a result of such
conferences, the British Government and the High
Commissioners will have a more responsible and
mature white opinion to reckon with and to guide
them in their task. An informal East African con-
ference already exists so far as the territories from
Rhodesia northwards are concerned. The Union

AFRICAN SETTLEMENT 69

should join this conference, and its organization
should be regularized so that more weight will attach
to its discussions and recommendations. Nothing in
the nature of a parliament or even of a General
African Advisory Council is intended or is necessary.
A common forum for exchanging ideas, for clarifying
viewpoints, for self-education of the leaders, and for
hammering out common policies embodied in resolu-
tions is all that is wanted. By such means a healthy
public opinion will be formed, and the pitfalls due to
the narrower local outlook will be avoided in matters
of far-reaching common significance. Such a con-
ference with a permanent secretariat will meet all the
present needs of the case, and it may become an
institution which will yet exercise a most important
and beneficent influence over future developments on
this continent a sort of African League of Nations,
in fact, for the British States.

The address which I have given to-day on the
policy of white settlement in Africa is incomplete
without the address on native policy which I intend
to deliver on the i6th November. The two will
together sketch an integral African policy, the native
and white aspects of which are closely inter-
dependent.

Ill

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

OUR subject to-day will be African Native Policy.
It bristles with difficult and contentious issues,
and I must crave your attention to what may be a
tedious discussion. If, owing to the short time at my
disposal, I pass lightly over certain points, you must
bear in mind that nevertheless I am fully aware of their
importance. In our discussion of white settlement
in Africa a good deal was said also on native policy,
but only incidentally, as bearing on the subject of
white settlement. But native policy deserves to be
considered by itself, as it is far and away the most im-
portant issue which is raised by our European contact
with the African continent and its peoples. The
policy or policies which the European peoples are
going to pursue towards the natives of Africa will
have far-reaching effects, not only for Africa, but for
the future of the world . This is the issue of the contact
of colours and civilizations, which seems destined to
become a dominant issue of the twentieth century. In
Asia a similar question of the contact of colours and
cultures is rapidly coming to the front, and history
tells us what these impacts of Asia and Europe on
each other have meant in the past. These impacts
it was which, renewed at various epochs, set the
peoples of Europe going, and launched them on
that career which has led to their domination
of the world. The influence of Europe to-day on

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74 NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

Asia seems to be having a somewhat similar rousing
effect on a colossal scale. Under the stimulus of
Western ideas, Asia is being stirred and shaken from
one end to the other. The rise of Japan, the awaken-
ing of India, China, the Near East, and the Malayan
islands of the Pacific seem to herald another of the
great movements or upheavals of history. It will
depend very much on the wisdom and far-sighted
policies of the European peoples, and on the growth
and the success of the League of Nations in its
pacific world-policy, whether this awakening of the
East will be for the good or the ill of the human race
as a whole.

We are concerned to-day with these racial reactions
in so far as they affect Europe and Africa a smaller
question, but still a very large human question,
fraught with immense possibilities for the future of
our own civilization as well as that of Africa. What
is wanted in Africa to-day is a wise far-sighted native
policy. If we could evolve and pursue a policy which
will promote the cause of civilization in Africa with-
out injustice to the African, without injury to what
is typical and specific in the African, we shall
render a great service to the cause of humanity.
For there is much that is good in the African and
which ought to be preserved and developed. The
negro and the negroid Bantu form a distinct human
type which the world would be poorer without. Here
in this vast continent, with its wide geographical
variety and its great climatic differences, this unique
human type has been fixing itself for thousands of

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 75

years. It is even possible, so some anthropologists
hold, that this was the original mother-type of the
human race and that Africa holds the cradle of man-
kind. But whether this is so or not, at any rate here
we have the vast result of time, which we should
conserve and develop with the same high respect
which we feel towards all great natural facts. This
type has some wonderful characteristics. It has
largely remained a child type, with a child psychology
and outlook. A child-like human cannot be a bad
human, for are we not in spiritual matters bidden
to be like unto little children? Perhaps as a direct
result of this temperament the African is the only
happy human I have come across. No other race is
so easily satisfied, so good-tempered, so care-free.
If this had not been the case, it could scarcely have
survived the intolerable evils which have weighed on
it like a nightmare through the ages. A race, which
could survive the immemorial practice of the witch
doctor and the slave trader, and preserve its inherent
simplicity and sweetness of disposition, must have
some very fine moral qualities. The African easily
forgets past troubles, and does not anticipate future
troubles. This happy-go-lucky disposition is a great
asset, but it has also its drawbacks. There is no
inward incentive to improvement, there is no per-
sistent effort in construction, and there is complete
absorption in the present, its joys and sorrows. Wine,
women, and song in their African forms remain the
great consolations of life. No indigenous religion has
been evolved, no literature, no art since the magnifi-

76 NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

cent promise of the cave-men and the South African
petroglyphist, no architecture since Zimbabwe (if
that is African). Enough for the Africans the simple
joys of village life, the dance, the tom-tom, the con-
tinual excitement of forms of fighting which cause
little bloodshed. They can stand any amount of
physical hardship and suffering, but when deprived
of these simple enjoyments, they droop, sicken, and
die. Travellers tell how for weeks the slaves would
move impassively in captive gangs; but when they
passed a village and heard the pleasant noises of
children, the song and the dance, they would
suddenly collapse and die, as if of a broken heart.
These children of nature have not the inner tough-
ness and persistence of the European, nor those
social and moral incentives to progress which have
built up European civilization in a comparatively
short period. But they have a temperament which
suits mother Africa, and which brings out the simple
joys of life and deadens its pain, such as no other race
possesses.

It is clear that a race so unique, and so different in
its mentality and its cultures from those of Europe,
requires a policy very unlike that which would suit
Europeans. Nothing could be worse for Africa than
the application of a policy, the object or tendency of
which would be to destroy the basis of this African
type, to de-Africanize the African and turn him
either into a beast of the field or into a pseudo-
European. And yet in the past we have tried both
alternatives in our dealings with the Africans. First

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 77

we looked upon the African as essentially inferior or
sub-human, as having no soul, and as being only fit to
be a slave. As a slave he became an article of com-
merce, and the greatest article of export from this
continent for centuries. But the horrors of this trade
became such that the modern conscience finally re-
volted and stamped out African slavery peacefully
in the British Empire, but in America with the con-
vulsions of civil war and a million dead. Then we
changed to the opposite extreme. The African now
became a man and a brother. Religion and politics
combined to shape this new African policy. The
principles of the French Revolution which had
emancipated Europe were applied to Africa ; liberty,
equality, and fraternity could turn bad Africans into
good Europeans. The political system of the natives
was ruthlessly destroyed in order to incorporate
them as equals into the white system. The African
was good as a potential European; his social and
political culture was bad, barbarous, and only deserv-
ing to be stamped out root and branch. In some of
the British possessions in Africa the native just emerg-
ing from barbarism was accepted as an equal citizen
with full political rights along with the whites. But
his native institutions were ruthlessly proscribed and
destroyed. The principle of equal rights was applied
in its crudest form, and while it gave the native a
semblance of equality with whites, which was little
good to him, it destroyed the basis of his African
system which was his highest good. These are the ]
two extreme native policies which have prevailed in^

78 NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

the past, and the second has been only less harmful
than the first. If Africa has to be redeemed, if Africa
has to make her own contribution to the world, if
Africa is to take her rightful place among the conti-
nents, we shall have to proceed on different lines and
evolve a policy which will not force her institutions
into an alien European mould, but which will preserve
her unity with her own past, conserve what is precious
in her past, and build her future progress and civiliza-
tion on specifically African foundations. That should
be the new policy, and such a policy would be in line
with the traditions of the British Empire. As I said
on an occasion which has become historic : the British
Empire does not stand for assimilation of its peoples
into a common type, it does not stand for standardiza-
tion, but for the fullest freest development of its
peoples along their own specific lines. This principle
applies not only to its European, but also to its Asiatic
and its African constituents.

It is a significant fact that this new orientation of
African policy had its origin in South Africa, and
that its author was Cecil Rhodes in his celebrated
Glen Grey Act. Rhodes 's African policy embodied
two main ideas: white settlement to supply the
steel framework and the stimulus for an enduring
civilization, and indigenous native institutions to ex-
press the specifically African character of the natives
in their future development and civilization. African
policies should arise in Africa, from the experience
of the men and women who are in daily contact with
its living problems. And it is therefore significant that

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 79

the lines on which the new Africa is being shaped are
mainly of African origin. When I call Rhodes the
original author of the new policy I do not mean that
it was his sole, individual inspiration. During the
most fruitful and successful period of his public life
he was associated with Jan Hofmeyr, who was one of
the wisest, most experienced, and far-sighted men
whom South Africa has ever produced. In evolving
his native policy Rhodes collaborated closely and con-
tinuously with Hofmeyr ; and the policy in the form
it took in the celebrated Glen Grey Act was therefore
the joint product of Rhodes and Hofmeyr, of English-
and Dutch-speaking South Africans. The new orienta-
tion therefore rests on a very broad basis of African
experience.

Prior to the Glen Grey legislation it had been the
practice in South Africa, as it had been the practice
in all European-occupied territory in Africa, to rule
the natives direct through government officials,
direct rule, as it has been called. Even where
natives were left undisturbed in the possession of
their tribal lands, the native organs of self-govern-
ment were broken down and government rule was
constituted in their place. The native chiefs were
either deposed and deprived of authority, or where
use was made of them they were incorporated into the
official system and appointed as officers of the Govern-
ment, from whom they derived all their authority and
in whose name that authority was exercised. The^
principal innovation of Rhodes in his new legislation
was, so far as possible, to introduce indirect white

8o NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

rule, and to make the natives manage their local
tribal affairs. A system of native councils was
inaugurated for the smaller areas, from which again
delegates met to form a larger general council
under the chairmanship of the resident magistrate
of the area. Powers of taxation, of administration,
and of recommending legislation to the Govern-
ment were conferred on these councils. His second
innovation was to make it possible for natives in
their tribal areas to become possessed of their own
separate plots of agricultural land, instead of the
traditional communal holding and working of land
which is the universal native system throughout
Africa. Under the native system the tribe, not the
individual, owns the lands, and from time to time
the chief and his advisers assign to each head of a
family the plot which he may cultivate for himself.
This plot can be and is usually changed, so that there
is no fixity of tenure, and in consequence no incentive
to improve the land and to do the best with it or get
the most out of it. For this communal social system
of land tenure Rhodes substituted individual tenure >
under certain reservations and with certain safeguards
designed in the interests of the native holders them-
selves. A third feature of his system was a labour tax
of ten shillings per annum, imposed on all native heads
of families who did not go out to work beyond their
district for three months in the year. The object of
this tax was obvious. The whites wanted labourers,
and the natives were supposed to require some in-
ducement to go and work instead of sitting on their

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 81

holdings and seeing their women work. Both in the
interests of the whites and the natives, therefore, this
special tax was imposed as an economic experiment.
The tax, however, was unpopular with the natives
from the start, and soon appeared to be an unnecessary
irritation. The native men went to work quite readily
or sent their young men to work for the whites. Be-
fore many years this special tax was repealed, and in
later years a similar tax in the Transvaal met with the
same fate. The native, although a slow worker, is not
lazy, and does not require any special inducement to
play his part in the economic development of the
country. His main incentive is the rising scale of his
needs in food and clothing, both for himself and for
his often large family of children. In addition he
is handicapped in South Africa by want of suf-
ficient land for his requirements, and by the non-
economic character of native farming on the whole.
With his rise in the scale of civilization his needs
rapidly develop, and he soon finds it necessary to
supplement the scanty proceeds of his farming with
the ready cash which he can earn in white employ-
ment. His economic lot, therefore, inevitably be-
comes more difficult, and forms a sufficient incentive
to go out and work without any special means taken
to force him to do so. The universal experience in
Africa is that, although it takes some time at the
beginning for the native to enter white employment,
his rapidly growing economic needs in a white en-
vironment, and with a rising scale of living, soon make
him take his full share of the burden without any

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82 NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

necessity to resort to special measures. The young
European communities who in other parts of the
African continent are struggling with this labour
question as their principal trouble, and who may feel
tempted to resort to the unsuccessful experiments
which we have tried and discarded in South Africa,
may take heart from our experience in South Africa
of the native as a continuously improving worker.
Dismissing therefore the question of a labour tax, we
come to consider the other features of Rhodes 's Act,
their general bearing on African native policy.

His provision of individual agricultural holdings
has been a great success, and has been a principal
means of native advance where it has been adopted in
the Union. The native system of land socialism is
not only primitive but most wasteful in its working.
Why should the native farmer improve and render
productive what belongs to the community, and may
be taken away from him by the community? The
result is that these communal farm lands rapidly
deteriorate and become exhausted, and have to be
abandoned after a few years' use. Then the farm
lands shift to another area of the tribal domain where
the same process of uneconomic exhaustion is re-
peated. And in the course of years this shifting culti-
vation works havoc with the natural resources of the
domain; the soil is progressively exhausted; the
forests and trees disappear; the natural vegetable
covering is destroyed; soil erosion sets in; the rainfall
is lessened, and what water does fall flows off in
torrents; arid conditions arise; and the tribal lands

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 83

become a barren waste. This sad phenomenon can
be seen in one degree or another all over the
African continent. Not only in South Africa, but in
many other parts of the continent a native area or
reserve can be recognized at a distance by the obvious
general deterioration of the natural vegetation and the
soil. But for the enormous natural resources and
recuperative power of the continent, most of Africa
would by now be a howling wilderness, because of
the wasteful rural economy of its population. Unless
the carrying capacity of the land is to be gravely im-
paired in the future, steps will have to be taken every-
where to preserve the forests and the soil, and to teach
the native better methods of agriculture. Practical
agricultural education must indeed become one of
the principal subjects of native education. But
nothing will have a more far-reaching effect than a
general system of individual agricultural holdings
under proper safeguards. The economic incentive
to use properly, and to improve, what is one's own,
is more powerful than any other factor of progress.
In a world tending more and more towards general
socialism, the vague phrase of 'native socialism' may
sound attractive, but its practical effects in Africa
are everywhere devastating, and it has significantly
maintained on that continent the most backward
conditions to be found anywhere.

The main object of the Glen Grey legislation was,
however, to give the native his own institutions for
his self-development and self-government. It marks
definitely the abandonment of the older policy of

84 NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

direct rule, according to which the white man's
system and culture had to be imposed on the native,
and native institutions had to be scrapped as bar-
barous. The new policy is to foster an indigenous
native culture or system of cultures, and to cease to
force the African into alien European moulds. As a
practical policy of native government it has worked
most successfully. Gradually the system of native
councils and native self-government through their
own tribal chiefs and elected councils has been
extended from one native area to another in the
Cape Province, until to-day about two-thirds of
the Cape natives, or roughly over a million, fall
under this system and manage their own local affairs
according to their own ideas under the supervision
of the European magistrates. They impose a small
capitation tax of ten shillings per annum for their
own local requirements, they look after their own
roads, and the dipping of their cattle against disease;
they teach improved agricultural methods through
their own native officers ; they amend their customary
native law, advise the Government in regard to pro-
posed laws in their areas, and in many other ways
they look after their own local interests, find useful
expression for their political energies, and get an
invaluable training in disinterested public service.
A sense of pride in their institutions and their own
administration is rapidly developing, and, along with
valuable experience in administration and public
affairs, they are also acquiring a due sense of respon-
sibility; where mistakes are made they feel satis-

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 85

fied that they have only themselves to blame. After
the new system had worked successfully and with
ever increasing efficiency for twenty-five years, I
thought the time ripe in 1920 to extend it to the whole
of the Union, and in that year an Act was passed
which gave increased powers to the councils and
authorized the Government to introduce them over
the whole Union, wherever the advance of the natives
might justify the step. A Native Affairs Commission
was at the same time appointed to advise the natives
and the Government in regard to the establishment
of new Councils, as well as in reference to all legisla-
tion affecting the natives. And it is confidently
expected that before many years have passed the
greater portion of the native population of South
Africa will be in charge of their own local affairs,
under general white supervision; and in this way
they will get an outlet for their political and ad-
ministrative energies and ambitions which will give
them the necessary training for eventual participa-
tion in a wider sphere of public life.

The new departure is most far-reaching and has
come none too soon. Already the African system is
disintegrating everywhere over the whole African
continent. Many factors have combined to produce
this situation. Missionaries share the blame with
governments, the fight against the native social ideas
has been no less destructive than the deposition
of native chiefs and the institution of European
organs of government. Unfortunately the earlier
efforts of missionary enterprise were made without

86 NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

any reference to, or knowledge of, the peculiar native
psychology, or the light which anthropology has
thrown on the past of human cultures. For the
natives, religion, law, natural science, social customs
and institutions, all form one blended whole, which
enshrines their view of the world and of the forces
governing it. Attack this complex system at any
single point, and the whole is endangered. The
introduction of the Christian religion meant not only
the breakdown of the primitive belief in spirits, in
magic and witchcraft, and the abandonment of the
practice of polygamy ; it meant the breakdown of the
entire integral native Weltanschauung or outlook on
life and the world. A knowledge of anthropology
would have been most useful, and would have
helped to conserve the native social system, while
ridding it of what was barbarous or degrading.
The tendency of the Christian mission has therefore
on the whole been to hasten the disintegration of the
native system, both in its good and its bad aspects.
To this has been added the introduction of the white
man's administration through his own official organs,
the breakdown of the authority of the chiefs and the
tribal system, and the loosening of the bonds which
bind native society together, with the consequent
weakening or disappearance of tribal discipline over
the young men and women of the tribe. The general
disintegration has been powerfully reinforced by the
vast improvement in the means of transport, the
opening of communications, and by labour recruit-
ment, which have led to the movement of natives

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 87

and their mix-up on a scale which would have been
impossible before. (The events of the Great War on
the African continent Tiave also contributed to this
general disintegration. If the bonds of native tribal
cohesion and authority are dissolved, the African
governments will everywhere sit with vast hordes
of detribalized natives on their hands, for whom
the traditional restraints and the discipline of the
chiefs and the elders will have no force or effect.
The old social and religious sanctions will have dis-
appeared, while no new sanctions except those of the
white man's laws will have been substituted. Such
a situation would be unprecedented in the history
of the world and the results may well be general
chaos. From time immemorial the natives of Africa
have been subject to a stern, even a ruthless,
discipline, and their social system has rested on the
despotic authority of their chiefs. If this system
breaks down and tribal discipline disappears, native
society will be resolved into its human atoms, with
possibilities of universal Bolshevism and chaos which
no friend of the natives, or the orderly civilization of
this continent, could contemplate with equanimity.
Freed from all traditional moral and social discipline,
the native, just emerging from barbarism, may throw
all restraint to the winds. Such a breakdown should
be prevented at all costs, and everything should be
done to maintain in the future the authority which
has guided native life in the past. In the interests of
the native as well as those of the European adminis-
trations responsible for their welfare, we are called

88 NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

upon to retrace our steps, to take all proper measures
which are still possible to restore or preserve the autho-
rity of the chiefs, and to maintain the bonds of soli-
darity and discipline which have supported the tribal
organization of the natives in the past. This authority
or discipline need not be exercised in a barbarous way,
and should be shorn of all old-time cruelty and other
undesirable features. But in essence it should be
maintained, and under the general supervision and
check of the European magistrate it should continue
to be exercised. Special means should be taken to
instruct chiefs in their duties, and the sons of chiefs
and headmen should be trained to the proper exer-
cise of the leadership which they may be called upon
to fill. Such schools already exist, not only in South
Africa, but under the Tanganyika and Uganda
administrations, and may prove most helpful in pre-
serving the traditional native chieftainship and head-
manship as a vital link in the organization of native
society.

The new policy is in effect enshrined in the Cove-
nant of the League of Nations and in the mandates
passed thereunder. Act 22 of the Covenant lays down
that in those colonies and territories taken from the
defeated Powers, which are inhabited by peoples not
yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous
conditions of the modern world, there shall be applied
the principle, that the well-being and development of
such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization, and
that this trust shall be carried out by advanced
nations acting as mandatories on behalf of the League

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 89

of Nations. The development of peoples, not yet able
to stand by themselves, can only mean the progress
and civilization of these backward peoples in accor-
dance with their own institutions, customs, and ideas,
in so far as these are not incompatible with the ideals
of civilization. That this was the plain meaning and
intention of the article I can state with some authority,
as I was in a measure responsible for this mandate
principle and for its formulation in article 22 of the
Covenant. This article enshrines a policy and a prin-
ciple which is not only in consonance with common
sense, but which has already been tested in practice
on a fairly large scale, and which in future ought to
govern universally the contacts between European
and other less advanced peoples.

It may be of some interest to indicate briefly how
this policy is being applied in a mandated territory
like Tanganyika. The foundation of the system is the
maintenance and building up of the authority of
the chiefs in their various ranks. Their sons receive
special training in a school for the sons of chiefs,
intended to fit them for their future duties. Their
office is hereditary, but deposition and popular
election are both possible in accordance with native
ideas. The chief is responsible for the administration
of his tribe, maintains order and good government
within its area, and prevents the commission of
offences. The heads of families pay an annual tax of
ten shillings, which goes into the tribal treasury,
from which a fixed amount is paid to the chief for his
maintenance, the balance being devoted to tribal pur-

3404.4 TSJ

9 o NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

poses. The chief can issue orders for a large number
of purposes, such as prohibiting or controlling the
manufacture and consumption of intoxicating liquors,
preventing the pollution of the water in any stream,
controlling migration of natives to or from his area,
and requiring any native to cultivate land in such
a way and with such crops as will secure a proper
supply of food for him and his family. He may
also make rules imposing fines and other penalties for
the enforcement of his orders. Native courts are also
instituted, administering native law and custom in
both civil and criminal cases between natives within
a certain jurisdiction ; and from their decisions or
sentences appeals lie ultimately to a white authority,
who has also to confirm certain criminal sentences
before their execution.

The white administration remains responsible for
the larger functions of government, such as the com-
bating of human and animal diseases, the organiza-
tion of education, the improvement of agriculture,
and the construction of public works, and maintains
a staff for these and similar purposes . But all the purely
tribal concerns are left to the chief and his counsellors
whose actions are supervised by the white officer only
in certain cases intended to prevent abuses. The
native system may not be as efficient and incorruptible
as direct white rule would be, but a certain amount
of inefficiency or even injustice, according to white
ideas, is excusable, so long as the natives are trained
to govern themselves according to their own ideas,
and bear the responsibility for their own small mis-

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 91

takes. In this way they learn to stand by themselves,
and will in the long run be trained to do all their own
local government work. It is not only the training in
self-government that will benefit them. They will
develop the sense of responsibility which goes with
it, and which is in itself one of the most valuable
lessons of life. In looking after their own concerns
they will, in addition, cultivate a sense of pride in
their own system and increase their self-respect.
And, above all, they will develop an active interest in
their own public affairs, which will be of enormous
moral and social value. The white man does the
native a grave injury by doing everything for him in
, the way of government, and thereby depriving his life
of all public interest. Gone is the excitement of his
petty wars ; and if in addition there is the repression
of all his former public activities and the suppression
of his native values, we must expect a sense of frustra-
tion which will take all the zest out of his life. The
question has even been raised whether the white
man's rule, in taking all the interest out of native life,
is not responsible for that decadence, lowered birth-
rate, and slow petering out which we see in the case of
many primitive peoples. At any rate the new policy
of native self-government will provide the natives
with plenty of bones to chew at and plenty of matter
to wrangle over and they do love to talk and dispute
ad infinitwn and in that way help to fill their other-
wise empty lives with interest.

Another important consequence will follow from
this system of native institutions. Wherever Euro-

92 NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

peans and natives live in the same country, it will
mean separate parallel institutions for the two. The
old practice mixed up black with white in the same
institutions; and nothing else was possible, after the
native institutions and traditions had been carelessly
or deliberately destroyed. But in the new plan there
will be what is called in South Africa 'segregation'
separate institutions for the two elements of the
population, living in their own separate areas. Sepa-
rate institutions involve territorial segregation of the
white and black. If they live mixed up together it is
not practicable to sort them out under separate
institutions of their own. Institutional segregation
carries with it territorial segregation. The new policy
therefore gives the native his own traditional institu-
tions on land which is set aside for his exclusive
occupation. For agricultural and pastoral natives,
living their tribal life, large areas or reserves are set
aside, adequate for their present and future needs.
In not setting aside sufficient such areas in South
Africa in the past we committed a grievous mistake,
which is at the root of most of our difficulties in
native policy. For urbanized natives, on the other
hand, who live, not under tribal conditions but as
domestic servants or industrial workers in white
areas, there are set aside native villages or locations,
adjoining to the European towns. In both rural
reserves and town locations the natives take a
part in or run their own local self-government.
Such is the practice now in vogue in South Africa
and it is likely to develop still further, and to

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 93

spread all over Africa where white and black live
and work together in the same countries. For
residential and local government purposes a clean
cleavage is becoming ever more marked, the white
portion of the population living under more advanced
European institutions, while the natives next door
maintain their simpler indigenous system. This
separation is imperative, not only in the interests of
a native culture, and to prevent native traditions and
institutions from being swamped by the more power-
ful organization of the whites, but also for other im-
portant purposes, such as public health, racial purity,
and public good order. The mixing up of two such
alien elements as white and black leads to unhappy
social results racial miscegenation, moral deteriora-
tion of both, racial antipathy and clashes, and to many
other forms of social evil. In these great matters of
race, colour, and culture, residential separation and
parallel institutions alone can do justice to the ideals
of both sections of the population. The system is
accepted and welcomed by the vast majority of
natives; but it is resented by a small educated
minority who claim 'equal rights' with the whites.
It is, however, evident that the proper place of the
educated minority of the natives is with the rest of
their people, of whom they are the natural leaders,
and from whom they should not in any way be dis-
sociated.

Far more difficult questions arise on the industrial
plane. It is not practicable to separate black and
white in industry, and their working together in the

94 NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

same industry and in the same works leads to a certain
amount of competition and friction and antagonism,
for which no solution has yet been found. Unhappy
attempts have been made in South Africa to introduce
a colour bar, and an Act of that nature is actually on
the Statute book, but happily no attempt has yet been
made to apply it in practice. It empowers the Govern-
ment to set aside separate spheres of work for the
native and the non-native, the object being to confine
the native to the more or less unskilled occupations or
grades of work. The inherent economic difficulties
of such a distribution of industrial functions, the
universal objection of the native workers, and the
sense of fair-play among the whites will make its
practical application virtually impossible. No statu-
tory barrier of that kind should be placed on the
native who wishes to raise himself in the scale of
civilization, nor could it be maintained for long
against the weight of modern public opinion. As
a worker the white man should be able to hold his
own in competition with the native. Industrial as
distinguished from territorial segregation would be
both impracticable and an offence against the modern
conscience.

There remains the big question how far the
parallelism of native and white institutions is to go ?
Is it to be confined to local government, or is it to go
all the way, up to the level of full political or parlia-
mentary government? Should black and white co-
operate in the same parliamentary institutions of the
country ? If so, should they have separate representa-

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 95

tives in the same parliamentary institutions? Few
acquainted with the facts and the difficulties can
profess to see clear daylight in the tangle of this
problem. In the older practice, embodied in the
constitution of the former Cape Colony and in many
other colonial institutions, political equality between
the different races on the basis of a complete mixture
of political rights was recognized. Justice is colour-
blind and recognizes no political differences on
grounds of colour or race. Hence the formula of
equal 'rights for all civilized men' with which the
name of Rhodes is identified, and which represents
the traditional British policy. That policy, however,
arose at a time when the doctrine of native paral-
lelism had not yet emerged, when native institutions
were proscribed as barbarous, and the only place for
the civilized native was therefore in the white man's
system and the white man's institutions. The
question is whether the new principle makes, or
should make, any difference to the old tradition of
mixed and equal political rights in the same parlia-
mentary institutions. I notice that the Hilton Young
Commission, after having made a powerful plea for
separate native institutions for local government
purposes, pause when they come up against the
question of parliamentary institutions, and in the
end leave the question over for the future.

'If ' (they say), 'the idea of parallel development is accepted,
then it follows that it is desirable to keep the way open as long
as possible for the maximum measure of political segregation.
This suggests that political development for the native and

96 NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

the settled areas should be carried forward on separate lines

native and British respectively as far as possible.' 1

Lord Lugard, in dealing with the question of equal
rights in relation to colour, lays down the following
proposition which a former President of the United
States of America approved of:

'Here, then/ (he says), 'is the true conception of the inter-
relation of colour: complete uniformity in ideals, absolute
equality in the paths of knowledge and culture, equal oppor-
tunity for those who strive, equal administration for those
who achieve ; in matters social and racial a separate path, each
pursuing his own inherited traditions, preserving his own
race-purity and race-pride ; equality in things spiritual, agreed
difference in the physical and material.' 2

An admirable statement of the principle to which
I think all fair-minded men will agree. But you
notice once more the silence about political rights.

I do not think there can be, or that at bottom there
is, among those who have given the subject serious
attention, any doubt that in the supreme legislature
of a country with a mixed population all classes and
colours should have representation. It is repug-
nant to our civilized European ideas that the weaker
in a community should not be heard or should go
without representation, either by themselves or
through European spokesmen, where their interests
are concerned. There can be but one sovereign body
in a country, and that body should represent the
weaker no less than the stronger. To that extent there
should be agreement. As to the mode of representa-

1 Cmd.3234, p. 84. 2 Dual Mandate, p. 87

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 97

tion of colour in the supreme parliament there can be
legitimate difference of opinion. The older practice
was to give equal rights in the sense of mixed repre-
sentation, the same member of the legislature repre-
senting mixed bodies of white and native voters alike.
The new policy of segregation of political rights would
seem to point to separate representation for the
colours in the same parliament so that white and
native voters would vote in separate constituencies
for separate representatives. There would still be
equal political rights, and the Rhodes ideal in that
sense would not be affected, but they would be
exercised separately or communally. In South Africa,
which, owing to the advanced condition of its natives,
has become a sort of cockpit for race issues, we started
with the older system of mixed constituencies in the
Cape Colony, and this system is embodied and en-
trenched in the Act of Union which forms our
Constitution. The present Government have pro-
posed to scrap this system for the future, and to give
separate representation in Parliament to native and
non-native voters. A policy which might have been
easy and, from certain points of view, even commend-
able, with a clean slate before us, has become enor-
mously difficult because of what has been done in
the past, and the justifiable fervour with which the
Cape natives cling to their vested rights, which they
have enjoyed for three-quarters of a century. A battle
royal is still proceeding on this and cognate issues
affecting the political rights of the natives, and it will
require all the wisdom and patience which we can

3404.4

98 NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

command in South Africa if we are to reach a
generally acceptable solution. If we had to do
only with the tribal native voters the question
would not be so difficult, and the application of
the general segregation principle to the particular
case of political rights might be justified. Unfor-
tunately very large numbers of detribalized natives
are spread all over the Cape, and are no longer resi-
dent or registered in the native areas . These urbanized
natives living among the whites constitute the real
crux, and it is a difficulty which goes far beyond the
political issue. They raise a problem for the whole
principle of segregation, as they claim to be civilized
and Europeanized, and do not wish to be thrust back
into the seclusion of their former tribal associations,
or to forgo their new place in the sun among the
whites. With the application of strict education and
civilization tests it would probably be the better
course to allow them to exercise their political rights
along with the whites. Were it not for this case of
the urbanized or detribalized natives, the colour
problem, not only in South Africa but elsewhere
in Africa, would be shorn of most of its difficulties.
And the situation in South Africa is therefore a lesson
to all the younger British communities farther north
to prevent as much as possible the detachment of the
native from his tribal connexion, and to enforce from
the very start the system of segregation with its
conservation of separate native institutions.

In conclusion I wish to refer to an apparent dis-
crepancy between this lecture and my previous one.

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 99

In that lecture I stressed the importance of white
settlement in Africa as a potent means of furthering
native progress and civilization. I pointed out that
enduring contact with the white man's civilization is
the surest way to civilize the native. In this lecture
I have emphasized the importance of preserving
native institutions, of keeping intact as far as possible
the native system of organization and social discipline.
It may be thought that there is a clash between these
two aims, and that civilization by white contact must
inevitably lead to the undermining and ultimately to
the destruction of the native culture and social sys-
tem. This, however, is not so. So long as there is
territorial segregation, so long as the native family
home is not with the white man but in his own area,
so long the native organization will not be materially
affected. While the native may come voluntarily out
of his own area for a limited period every year to work
with a white employer, he will leave his wife and chil-
dren behind in their native home. The family life in
the native home will continue on the traditional lines ;
the routine of the family and of the tribe will not be
altered in any material respect. The male adults,
father and sons, will no doubt imbibe new ideas in
their white employment, but their social system will
not suffer on that account. It is only when segrega-
tion breaks down, when the whole family migrates
from the tribal home and out of the tribal jurisdiction
to the white man's farm or the white man's town,
that the tribal bond is snapped, and the traditional
system falls into decay. And it is this migration of

ioo NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

the native family, of the females and children, to
the farms and the towns which should be prevented.
As soon as this migration is permitted the pro-
cess commences which ends in the urbanized de-
tribalized native and the disappearance of the native
organization. It is not white employment of the native
males that works the mischief, but the abandonment
of the native tribal home by the women and children.
This the law should vigorously prevent, and the
system whether it is administered through passes
or in any other way should only allow the residence
of males for limited periods, and for purposes of
employment among the whites. If this is done there
will be no serious danger that the indigenous native
system will be unduly affected.

At the same time I wish to point out that the
prevention of this migration will be no easy task,
even where ample tribal lands are guaranteed to the
natives. The whites like to have the families of their
native servants with them. It means more continuous
and less broken periods of labour, and it means more
satisfied labourers. It means, moreover, the use of the
women and children for such work as they are fit for.
These are considerable advantages, and the white em-
ployers will not be very keen to carry out a law against
them. On the other hand, the native also very often
likes to get away from the jurisdiction of the chief
and the discipline of the tribe, and prefers to have his
women and his children around him in his daily life.
For the native the pressure to break away from the
old bonds and live with his white master is thus very

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 101

great. We have seen the process at work in South
Africa. When the white emigrants entered and oc-
cupied Natal, they found the entire territory between
Zululand and Pondoland unoccupied; it had been
laid bare and made a waste buffer between these two
powerful native states. But no sooner had the whites
settled in this empty area, than native deserters, dis-
satisfied with the harsh rule of their chiefs, began to
arrive and to settle as servants among the whites.
And to-day, through this wholly voluntary migration,
the province of Natal has a very large native popula-
tion. It was not a case of the natives not having
sufficient fertile lands for their own use. Zululand is
one of the most fertile parts of South Africa, and it
was and remains comparatively thinly populated.
White employment, white protection, the freedom of
the white man's rule compared to the discipline of the
native chief and the jurisdiction of the tribe have been
the potent factors in bringing about this migration.
And they will continue to operate in all parts of Africa
where whites settle down. In the old Cape Colony
one frontier after another was drawn by the Cape
governors between the white settlements and the
native tribes, and migration from the one to the other
was prohibited under stern penalties. But the system
was for ever breaking down. The whites like to have
native servants; the natives prefer to have white
masters, and this double economic attraction has
proved too much for any prohibitory law.

There is, however, no reason why segregation, al-
though it has broken down in South Africa in the

102 NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA

past, should not be a workable and enforceable system
in the future. The power of Government and the
reach of the law are to-day very different from what
they were under the primitive nomadic conditions of
the old Cape frontier. The system of native adminis-
tration is to-day so ramified and pervasive, the police-
man is so ubiquitous, that segregation can be tried
under far more favourable conditions than existed in
South Africa in the past. The young countries to the
north can start with a clean slate. They can learn
from the mistakes which we made in South Africa,
and can ab initio reserve ample lands for the natives
to live and work on. They can check the abuses of
the chiefs, and can effectively supervise the working
of the native system, both in its administrative and
judicial aspects. Witchcraft can be fought, official
injustice and corruption can be largely prevented,
schools can be established, and the simplest ameni-
ties of civilized life can be introduced, in the native
villages and tribal areas. The position is really very
different from what it was generations ago, and
the inducements for native families to remain on
their tribal lands are such, or can be made such,
that a segregation law will become comparatively easy
to carry out. The women and children will continue
to carry on their native life at home, will continue to
work in the homes and in the fields as they have done
from the immemorial past. The men, instead of lying
in the sun, or brawling over their beer, or indulging
in the dangerous sport of tribal warfare, will go out
to work, and supplement the family income and

NATIVE POLICY IN AFRICA 103

render tolerable a weight which under the new
conditions is becoming more and more difficult for
the women and children. They should never be
away long, and the physical and moral life of the
family and the tribe need not suffer because of the
short periods of absence. Theorists may pick holes
in such a system, but there is no practical reason
why it should not work in practice. There is no
break in the communal village life, but among
the men the thin end of the industrial wedge is
quietly introduced, and they rightly become the
bread-winners which they have seldom or never
been. Such a system has great redeeming features,
and compares more than favourably with the old
ways, which meant absolute stagnation for the men,
and virtual slavery for the women. It represents a
compromise between the native routine of the past
and the white man's industrial system, which may
work tolerably well in the future. Without breaking
down what is good in the native system, it will graft
on to it a wholesome economic development, which
will yet not disturb too deeply the traditional ways
of mother Africa. The white man's civilization and
the steadily progressing native culture will live side
by side and react on each other, and the problems
of their contact will provide a fruitful theme for the
statesmen of the future.

IV
WORLD-PEACE

34O4 4

WORLD-PEACE

THE object which Rhodes had in view in making
his famous will is best brought out in the original
draft which he made when he was a young man of
twenty-four, and had his life still before him and his
great fortune to make. In this curious document he
expresses his object as being 'the foundation of so
great a Power as hereafter to render wars impossible
and to promote the best interests of humanity'. The
Power he meant was stated to be a greatly expanded
British Empire, with the U.S.A. once more reunited
to it. In the final draft of his will, made twenty-two
years afterwards, he emphasizes the following among
his other objects, viz. 'the advantage to the colonies
as well as to England of the retention of the unity of
the Empire'. In spite of this emphasis on the unity
of the Empire, this final draft retained the American
scholarships, and included also the German scholar-
ships. It is therefore a fair inference that Rhodes 's
final vision was not confined to the British Empire,
but that he continued to cherish the ideal of world
peace and the best interests of humanity at large. It
was for the purpose of achieving this larger ideal that
he wished to bring together the scholars of what he
considered the three leading world-peoples. Through
the association of the future potential leaders of these
peoples at the same great school, he wished to pro-
mote international understanding, and thereby to

io8 WORLD-PEACE

lay the foundations for world-peace. World-peace

and human betterment remained his real ideals, and

the scholarship scheme was to be the means to their

realization.

While Rhodes was planning for world-peace in his
will, the terrible seeds of the future were germinating
in that placid Victorian world, and within a short span
of years after his death the greatest war in history had
broken out. To deepen the irony, the very peoples
whom he had singled out and had associated in his
will as the joint guarantors of future peace were the
principal protagonists against each other. Not only
was his dream falsified here, but, when the war was
over, an organization for world-peace was created
very different from that which Rhodes had originally
envisaged. In spite of this, however, his main object
and his plan for its attainment remain unaffected, and
the tremendous developments referred to have not
rendered his will by any means obsolete. The
scholarship scheme will still remain a potent and
permanent means to further the great ideal of world-
peace through human understanding. Hence, in
discussing the main policies of Rhodes, it is by
no means out of place to discuss what is to-day
the dominant issue of world politics. I therefore
make no apology for taking the subject of world-peace
as my theme to-day.

The new institution for world-peace the League
of Nations came into the world under the gravest
handicaps. It was almost killed by the initial ridicule
with which its appearance was hailed. It looked so

WORLD-PEACE 109

small and puny, so utterly unequal to the terrible
situations which might confront it, that few were
prepared to take it seriously. It was said to be the
scheme of the idealists, and, even as such, but a
travesty of the great hopes and expectations born of
the world- war. Hard-headed practical men were in-
clined to be sceptical; the old diplomatic order
sneered ; the powers-that-be smiled at this hope of
the world. Some thought the scheme too far-reaching
and ambitious ; others again thought it was too cum-
brous and impracticable, and that its machinery would
never function in a real crisis. Many were openly
hostile, called it a sham and a delusion, mere dope for
the unsuspecting, to lull them into a false sense of
security. In spite of the League the cry for security
went up all over Europe, from people who evidently
thought that there was no security to be looked for
from the League. I point to this original attitude
towards the League in order to emphasize the
great change that has taken place in public opinion
within the last ten years. There are still sceptics, but
they are not so loud ; they are on the defensive. The
Council and the Assembly of the League have not
become the refuge for pompous nonentities as was
expected ; the Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers
of Europe find it to their advantage to be present at
the sessions and to make use of the League as the
greatest platform in the world from which to address
the public. In spite of a chequered record and
many incidental failures, it has steadily made good
and established itself, until to-day it is universally

no WORLD-PEACE

accepted as an indispensable organ of international
relations. The founders have builded better than
they knew ; the experiment has worked better than
was expected; and the growing influence of the
League and the more respectful attitude adopted to-
wards it are a tribute to its steadily growing success.
We have passed out of the era of idle compliments
and covert sneers; the political realists have begun
to realize that there is something in the thing, and
that it is not one more idealistic bubble which is des-
tined to be pricked in the march of events. Friends
of the League, again, have no reason to be dissatisfied
with the progress made, and feel justified in looking
to the future with renewed hope, and in going forward
with a firmer determination than ever to make of the
League a powerful factor in human progress.

The change in public opinion to which I have
referred is a matter of the greatest significance. The
original lukewarmness and scepticism with which the
League was received were intelligible and in a sense
excusable. It was a new fact, the real significance
of which was not likely to be easily realized by
conservative-minded people. What was more, it
purported to be the beginning of a new order of
things in a world where innovations were up
against a very tough old order. Remembering the
prevailing ideas of the Victorian era, and the views
of international law and relations to which people
were accustomed, it is nothing short of amazing,
that in the short span of years which has elapsed
since the Great War, public opinion has come to

WORLD-PEACE in

accept so revolutionary a departure as that which
the League of Nations stands for. The sovereign
powers of Europe and the world have been brought
to sit round a table as a regular constitutional routine,
to discuss their most intimate affairs with each
other, to submit their legal differences to a court of
international justice, and their political or national
differences to mediation or conciliation boards. They
have made the use of that great weapon of national
aggrandizement war almost impossible, and they
have finally renounced its use as an instrument of
national policy. They have voluntarily agreed to
limit their sovereign rights in deference to the in-
terests of the international family of which they
recognize themselves to be members. Difficult as this
grand renunciation must be to those who only yester-
day believed firmly that national power and influ-
ence depended on military power and on the war
weapon, they are to-day proceeding slowly to the
still harder step of reducing their armies and navies
as a pledge of their good faith and their loyalty to the
new order of things. Looked at in its true light, in the
light of the ages and of the time-honoured ideas and
practice of mankind, we are beholding an amazing
thing we are witnessing one of the great miracles of
history. Of course the miracle has only become pos-
sible because of the unexampled sufferings through
which this generation has passed, because even the
most hardened sinner is sick at heart at the sorrows
and sufferings which have been our lot, and because
only a moral or political lunatic could dare to obstruct

ii2 WORLD-PEACE

a universal movement which calls a halt to such
calamities. But still it is essentially a miracle that we
are witnessing in the great peace movement of our
day. One incident, illustrating the far-reaching char-
acter of the changes now setting in, stands out very
clearly in my memory. When towards the end of
1918 I showed Lord Bryce the draft for a League of
Nations which I had made, and the main principles
of which were afterwards embodied in the Covenant,
that wise man, in spite of his convinced idealism,
asked me whether I really thought it possible that the
Great Powers would accept a scheme involving such
limitations on their sovereign rights. To him it
seemed entirely unlikely that they would reconcile
themselves to such a surrender. And yet that is
exactly what they have since done. The League may
be a difficult scheme to work, but the significant thing
is that the Great Powers have pledged themselves to
work it, that they have agreed to renounce their free
choice of action and bound themselves to what
amounts in effect to a consultative parliament of the
world. By the side of that great decision and the
enormous step in advance which it means, any small
failures to live up to the great decision, any small
lapses on the part of the League, are trifling indeed.
The great choice is made, the great renunciation
is over, and mankind has as it were at one bound,
and in the short space of ten years, jumped from the
old order to the new, across a gulf which may yet
prove to be the greatest break or divide in human
history. Let us not, in our first dissatisfaction or

WORLD-PEACE 113

indignation over occasional failures of the League
to live up to its great ideal, lose sight of this really
all-important fact; let us not lose our real sense of
values or our right perspective. The advance
actually and incontestably made is so great that
no incidental error or lapse on the part of the
League can seriously detract from it. There is no
looking back or retracing of steps possible any more
we can only move forward. He who recants and
proceeds to defy the League will be a traitor and a
law-breaker to a legally established order, and will be
dealt with on that basis. What has been done can
never be undone. One epoch closes in the history
of the world and another opens.

Mind you, I do not say that there will be no more
wars. But this I do say, that any future wars will rest
on an entirely different basis from that on which past
wars have rested, and will meet with a different
human attitude from that in which past wars were
regarded. Past wars, even the most immoral and
indefensible, were legal; they were sanctioned by
international usage and law. As great legal acts of
national policy they commanded the high devotion
of private citizens, they called forth the most exalted
heroisms; they were consecrated by the highest en-
thusiasm and covered by a blaze of glory. All the
loyalties and heroisms of which human nature was
capable, all the glory and romance which could thrill
the human soul deepest, were connected with war.
It will be so no longer. Henceforth, by an inevitable
process, war follows the chivalry of feudalism into the

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ii4 WORLD-PEACE

limbo of the past. If it shows its face, it will be with-
out the mask of romance which made it so attractive
in the past; it will appear to be the cruel, accursed,
illegal thing that it really is ; the nation that resorts to
it will be branded as a public danger and nuisance by
the general consensus of opinion. Public opinion will
frown on it, and it will be a sordid, tawdry affair.
The warlike Don Quixote of the future will meet
with laughter and ridicule, and if he persists he will
run the risk of condign punishment at the hands of
the nations. What is more: the future is to those
nations who unreservedly accept the new situation.
The wise and prudent nations will quietly and
deliberately shape their course according to the new
international system; will gradually ease their own
burdens and reduce their war establishments. The
emotional and imprudent on the other hand may
continue to think along the old lines, wasting their
treasure and their substance to no purpose, sacrificing
their national well-being, and running the risk of
eventually bumping their heads severely. But in
either case the ultimate result is a foregone conclusion,
and in time war will inevitably disappear from the
civilized practice of the world.

This expectation is in advance of present public
opinion, but I have no doubt whatever that my
reading of the situation is essentially correct; that
war, even if it cannot yet be said to be dead, is
finally doomed, and that no possible setback in the
fortunes of the League can seriously affect the ulti-
mate result. In the meantime the widespread spirit

WORLD-PEACE 115

of criticism, and even of hostility, which has accom-
panied the progress of the League during the last
ten years has on the whole proved rather helpful than
otherwise to it. It has prevented an attitude of self-
satisfaction from arising inside the League; it has
rendered impossible a spirit of complacency which
would have been fatal at the present stage. Nothing
would have been worse or more dangerous than to
have rested satisfied with the status quo and to have
looked upon the League as a final achievement and
as if the last word had been said. For at present
the League is but a step in the right direction
although a most epoch-making step and it will
have to cover a long road to its goal of world-
peace and human well-being. The critical attitude
towards the League has acted as a spur to further
thought and experiment, and has prevented the
present inchoate stage from being stereotyped as in
any sense final. The League in its methods and
procedure is a grand experiment, perhaps the greatest
ever traced in history ; perhaps an experiment destined
to become the greatest institution in human govern-
ment. But at present and for decades to come, it will
be in the experimental developing stage. We are still
in the creative, formative stage, and dare not rest
satisfied with the results already achieved. And the
deep note of criticism and scepticism continues to act
as an incentive to further unremitting effort and
progress.

Great ideas are wonderful things. They are the
real dynamics of individual and social advance.

u6 WORLD-PEACE

Once a great idea has appeared in concrete form it
seems to be well-nigh indestructible. It resembles
a Mendelian factor which, once achieved, can never
be undone again at any rate not in the ordinary
course of events. The buffeting which a great
fruitful idea receives from criticism or otherwise
only helps it along all the more. What is true
and fruitful and constructive in it is thereby dis-
engaged and freed from the merely temporary and
adventitious, and becomes in consequence all the
more effective. That is one of the reasons why great
ideas have often been so potent in history, in spite of
the violent opposition which they have usually en-
countered. In their fruitful truth they contain the
energy of their own propulsion : they move by their
own momentum, so to speak. And in the end they
become irresistible. Their appeal, their contacts are
universal, they become atmospheric, they infect minds
in all directions, and they win through by their own
infectiousness and irresistible power and driving
force. The League of Nations belongs to this fruitful
order of ideas. If it had not, it might never have
survived the enormous difficulties which surrounded
its origin and progress, and it would never have risen
as it has done, Antaeus-like, fresh and stronger from
every fall and every set-back.

Let me briefly refer to some of those serious
difficulties which it has encountered. One of the
earliest criticisms levelled against it was that it was
the conception and the work of unpractical idealists
and enthusiasts, who had little regard to the hard facts

WORLD-PEACE 117

of the practical world. This criticism was only too
widely believed and did, and still is doing, an
enormous amount of harm. That the Covenant was
largely the work of a small band of so-called idealists
at the Peace Conference I freely admit and all
honour to them for their achievement. But that the
scheme was visionary or out of relation to the actual
world situation I stoutly deny. Woodrow Wilson and
his co-workers were not only idealists but practical
men who recognized that the moment for action had
come, and who resolutely saw the business through
in spite of all the criticism and scepticism which was
the prevailing attitude towards the League idea at
Paris. If they too had failed, if this unique oppor-
tunity had been missed, the Peace might have become
an unmitigated disaster. There is no saying when
another chance might have occurred again, and we
might in this generation have continued to be weighed
down by the burden of the Peace Treaty, without the
vision of world-peace which, under the Covenant, has
been the one ray of hope and the one redeeming
feature of an otherwise hopeless situation. Now, at
any rate, the golden promise of world-peace has at
last been saved out of the wreck of the War and the
Peace, and the time may come when the world will
recognize that the authors of the Covenant were the
only really practical people at the Peace Conference.
So far from the Covenant being visionary or out of
relation to the facts and the exigencies of the time, it
is clear beyond all doubt that the Covenant sprang
out of the actual situation at the end of the war, and

ii8 WORLD-PEACE

the temper it had created in the minds of men. There
was an unspeakable longing that this horror might be
the last of its kind ; there was the well-grounded fear
for the future that another great war might be the
end of the human race ; and there was the deep feeling
that only the assured hope of future world-peace
could justify the endless sufferings through which
mankind had passed in the Great War. The Covenant
was the creative birth which issued out of those bitter
pains of the human race. If ever a great result arose
directly out of the necessities of a terrible situation,
the Covenant was par excellence such a birth of time.
Its form was of course shaped by the minds and
thoughts of those who elaborated it ; its substance, its
real being was the direct response to the measureless
woes and the boundless hopes of the human race at
the end of the world-war. It was the child of the
human race and of no individual or set of individuals.
The movement of history is often creative in the true
sense. Great events, interacting with the human spirit
on a vast scale, become pregnant with new meaning,
and out of the clashes, the sorrows and sufferings of
the time, arise vague anticipations of a new order;
then suddenly, unexpectedly, and as if by sheer acci-
dent, there comes the embodiment of some great hope
or thought, which, once formulated, acquires an inde-
pendent existence and movement of its own, and
becomes a new force in the world. It is only a shallow
reading of history which misses this deeper creative
character, which attributes all large-scale develop-
ments to personal scheming, and neglects the im-

WORLD-PEACE 119

mense movement of the imponderables, which has
been the main factor.

The essence of the Covenant and the most valuable
and important thing in it is just its main conception
that there shall be an organized system of conference
and discussion between the States for the promotion
of understanding and the prevention of war. The
particular machinery adopted to secure world-peace
is of minor importance in comparison. The particu-
lar methods will change and will be improved with
experience ; those settled on in the first instance need
not be looked upon as more than provisional. But
the main idea, materialized and regularized in a con-
ference system, has a potency and a value all its own,
and is probably the chief asset of the League. The
conference system has become firmly established
within the last ten years, and is functioning regu-
larly; and so the main idea of the League has
rooted itself in the public system of Europe, and bids
fair to become the most important organ of it. How
important such a regular conference system in itself
is for the promotion of peace must be patent to all
who remember the chaos in diplomacy which arose in
July 1914 as the prelude to the Great War a chaos
which, in my opinion, became the determining
cause of that catastrophe. From this point of view,
nothing can be more instructive than to compare the
present conference system of the League with the
methods in vogue before the Great War. To any one
looking into the matter it must be clear that a wide
gulf already divides us from the international prac-

izo WORLD-PEACE

tice of the pre-war era. Nothing can bring home to us
more clearly the real advance that the League has
already meant in the public life of the world than a
look back on that mad world of 1914. I would advise
every serious student of the League system to do what
I did last year, that is, to read once more through
the diplomatic correspondence and the negotiations
between the Great Powers which preceded the out-
break of the Great War. Never before had the
conviction been borne in upon me so strongly that it
was not so much the malign intent of governments as
the faultiness of the diplomatic methods which led
to that tragedy. It was a failure in diplomatic ma-
chinery even more than in human ability or goodwill.
The popular idea fostered during the war period for
propaganda purposes, that A was the devil of the
piece or B it was who deliberately planned the war,
has long since been shown to be devoid of substantial
truth. There was more drifting than planning at that
crisis of our fate. True, there had been a long era of
large-scale arming for national aggrandizement or
defence, for which a dreadful responsibility rested on
all concerned, but no one was big enough or mad
enough deliberately to press the button at the last.
And when finally a far-off shot by a madman at Sara-
jevo fired the train, there was no statesman big or sane
enough in the wide world to stop the consequences.
Human error and failure had created a situation
which acted like blind fate, with which intelligence
found it impossible to cope successfully in the end.
There followed a week of frenzied correspondence

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and diplomacy. Through a thick fog of suspicion,
misunderstanding, and confusion, the Powers were
bombarding one another with a barrage of correspon-
dence at long range. Sir Edward Grey, seeing the
futility of it all, made desperate efforts to collect them
round a table and make them reason together. But it
was too late, and the confusion grew as terror, panic,
and the traditional war complexes began to over-
power the mass mind of Europe. You cannot impro-
vise the machinery of reason in the last moments of
chaos. And so in utter confusion and helplessness
Europe stumbled, and could not but stumble, in
darkness into the abyss. The situation is very dif-
ferent to-day, whatever the pessimists may say. My
impression is strong that if the machinery of confer-
ence and direct consultation and confrontation such
as now exists in the League had been functioning
normally in July 1914, the outbreak of the Great War
could have been avoided, but not otherwise. And I
feel convinced that, in spite of its inherent weakness
and its many incidental failures, the League in its
present constitution and practice is a real guarantee
against a recurrence of such a frenzied crisis and such
a catastrophe as overtook the world fifteen years ago.
Its regular and settled methods will help the world
more effectively than all the alliances and balances of
power and groupings of the pre-war era. And after
all that is the true view and the real justification of
the League. It is, and becomes more and more, an
habitual organized system of international conference,
it supplies the very machinery, the absence of which

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122 WORLD-PEACE

proved fatal in 1914 ; and while it may not prevent the
sporadic outbreak of small wars on the outer fringe
of civilization, it will certainly render a crisis such as
that of 1914 impossible.

I have laboured this point because critics are more
apt to fasten on to details than to grasp the essentials
of the League system. Holes can be picked almost
everywhere in the details of its machinery; but its
main conception, its central conference system is in
my opinion unassailable. And if that system con-
tinues to grow at the present rate, and to root itself
sufficiently deeply in the public life of civilization,
war as an instrument of national policy is certainly
doomed in the long run. The League has become an
established institution with its regular routine. There
is all the difference in the world between such an
institution and a mere declaration of policy such as
the Kellogg Peace Pact. An institution is organic, it is
a living, growing entity; it roots itself ever more
deeply into the soil of life ; it has a definiteness, a
materiality, an assurance of growth and continuance
and security, such as no mere idea or abstract prin-
ciple can aspire to. The conference system, incar-
nated in an established institution which becomes ever
more closely associated with the international life of
the world, has a stability and acquires a prestige and
authority which makes it a far more powerful force in
human affairs than any abstract declaration could ever
possibly be. The declaration may be good and useful,
but it could never take the place of the living function-
ing institution. The function requires a structure.

WORLD-PEACE 123

Passing on now to another aspect of the League
system, I wish to draw attention to its pacific methods
as distinct from its pacific aims. The League aims at
peace by essentially peaceful methods. Its main
work is done through the international court, arbi-
tration bodies, and conciliation conferences in which
the parties to a dispute take part. To look upon the
League as a League of force, as an organization for
making war upon an international wrongdoer or
disturber of the peace, is completely to misunder-
stand its true nature. The issue as to the real nature
of the League was faced and fought out in the Com-
mission of the Peace Conference appointed to frame
the Covenant. One school held that the methods of
the League should be essentially peaceful, that con-
sultation and conference was of its very essence, and
that to endow it with a war staff and an international
force would not only detract from its fundamental
idea, but also seriously deflect it from its true mission
and in the end injure its work. This was the Anglo-
American view, whose advocates held tenaciously to
the position that the League was not a repetition of an
old device, and was not a war-machine to guarantee
peace, but an essentially new method and proce-
dure, a system of conference, arbitration, and con-
ciliation to prevent war. It was recognized that these
pacific methods might fail in their object, but so
might also the opposite method of an organization of
war in order to prevent war. And it was urged
that the pacific methods were far less likely to
lead to complications and to the eventual damage

124 WORLD-PEACE

of the League, and would prevent it from being
regarded as a warlike combination of a group
of Powers or sort of Holy Alliance. The thesis
of the French school was that the League in effect
was an organization to guarantee the peace settle-
ment, and they argued that a league for this pur-
pose without a general staff and an international
force to back up its decisions would be ineffective.
If the League was really going to be a new power and
vital influence in international affairs, if its decisions
had to be respected and international peace main-
tained, it was necessary for it to carry out its policy
with its own force, if necessary. Without such a force
it would not be respected or obeyed, and it might
easily degenerate into a debating society, devoid of
all authority or prestige. In this fundamental argu-
ment as to the future character of the League, the
Anglo-American view prevailed, and all attempts to
establish an international war-staff and an inter-
national force were defeated. As the Covenant was
framed, the League was confined to pacific methods,
the only exception to this rule being the unfortunate
Art. 10, which guarantees the sovereignty and the
territory of the members of the League. This
Article, which proved the chief stumbling-block
against the entry of the U.S. A. into the League, was
subsequently attacked in the Assembly of the League,
and a proposal was made to water down its effect. It
can only be looked upon as an exception to the real
trend and purpose of the League, and in time no
doubt it will be modified. The economic boycott

WORLD-PEACE 125

under Art. 16 is the only sanction with which the
League was provided, and an aggressor who defies an
arbitration award or a unanimous decision of this
Council of the League has to face the severance of
commercial and trade relations with the members of
the League, and may in that way be subjected to the
severest economic penalties. But the employment of
force or the resort to war by the members of the
League in such a case is not made compulsory by the
terms of the Covenant. It was thought that the
severance of financial and commercial intercourse
was such a drastic punishment to a modern state that
nothing more was really required in the nature of a
sanction. It might be a difficult sanction to apply in
practice, but the declaration of war against an
aggressor under the Covenant would certainly be an
even more difficult and dangerous procedure.

Although the attempt to establish the League on a
military basis was thus defeated, the French school
and their Continental supporters were never satisfied
with the result, and continued to look upon the League
as now constituted as being too weak to provide real
'security 5 . They therefore returned to the charge in
the Assembly of 1923 and got the Protocol accepted
by that Assembly. On a change of Government in
Great Britain the following year, the Protocol was in
turn vetoed, and the original constitution of the
League therefore remained intact. I look upon this
as a matter of first-class importance, and always con-
sidered the Protocol as a real calamity from the
League point of view. Mr. Henderson has made

126 WORLD-PEACE

amends for this early mistake by his fine performance
in bringing the whole British Empire under the
Optional Clause of the International Court. The
Protocol was in effect an all-in arbitration system for
members of the League, with a mutual guarantee of
military and naval force by the members in order to
carry out the arbitral awards against any aggressor
under the Protocol. It was a most ambitious attempt
to end war finally and to constitute the League a
military organization for the purpose. A new war
association was to be created in order to fight war.
Satan was to be enlisted to fight sin. To me this
seemed a grave departure from the sacred League
ideal, which was not merely to end war, but to end it
in a new way, in a way which would constitute a real
revolution in international relations, and which would
educate mankind away from its old warlike habits.
The arguments against a League provided with mili-
tary sanctions, which had prevailed at Paris, seemed
to me only to have gained additional force with the
passage of time. I felt convinced that the Dominions
of the British Empire would decline to fight the wars
of Central Europe in the future, and would in the last
resort break away from the League rather than remain
in it under such obligations. The Protocol might
therefore mean a serious defection from the League,
which was bound in the long run to affect the attitude
even of Great Britain towards it. It was clear to me
that unless the Protocol was torpedoed, it would tor-
pedo the League, and I consider the vetoing of the
Protocol after it had passed the Assembly the best

WORLD-PEACE 127

service which Sir Austen Chamberlain has rendered
the League, the Empire, and the world. There are no
heroic short cuts to our great goal of world-peace.
Mankind has to be educated into a new mentality and
into a new international method, and that education
is proceeding normally under the Covenant. The
scrapping of the Covenant for the Protocol or any-
thing like it would have been a real calamity.

Another serious effect of the Protocol would have
been to drive the U.S.A. still farther from the League.
In no conceivable way could the U.S.A. in future
have taken part, directly or indirectly, in a League
transformed on the Protocol basis. If the obligations
of the original League were too much for the Senate
to swallow, what would they have had to say of the
obligations under the Protocol ? How disastrous the
Protocol system with its war-like commitments would
have been , appears now more clearly from the declara-
tion of the Kellogg or Paris Peace Pact, which pro-
scribes all war as an instrument of national policy.
The Peace Pact is in line with the Covenant but not
with the Protocol. The Peace Pact is an advance on
the Covenant, as it is intended to close up a gap which
was admittedly left open in the Covenant. But if the
Protocol had become the basis of our public law, the
Peace Pact would not have fitted into such a system
and would probably never have seen the light of day.
In spite of American absence from the League, the
American mind is still moving in the direction which
it followed at the Peace Conference, and the importa-
tion of European ideas of military security into the

iz8 WORLD-PEACE

League would only have alienated America further
from the League. That would have been a calamity
from all conceivable points of view.

I said just now that a true and fruitful idea moves
by its own momentum, and grows by opposition.
The League supplies a striking illustration in support
of that dictum. The United States, after having most
cordially co-operated at Paris with the other Powers in
working out the Covenant and in establishing the
League, subsequently turned against both and de-
clined to ratify the Covenant, for reasons of her own
which it is not necessary for our purpose to discuss.
Her defection was a terrible blow to the League,
almost a knock-out blow, and many ardent supporters
of the League were at the time seriously doubtful
whether it could go on without the powerful parti-
cipation of the U.S.A. Grievously crippled, the
League still struggled on, made good, rendered
notable service to an impoverished and distracted
Europe, and gradually assisted in bringing order out
of chaos. I need not recount what she did, but it was
a notable record of good deeds, and its beneficent
effects are being felt in all directions in the Old
World. Meanwhile American abstention, which at
one time had appeared to be such a grievous blow,
began to assume a different aspect. America could
not really wash her hands of her own work ; the great
ideal underlying the Covenant kept haunting her.
The fair-minded and reasonable men and women of
that great people felt disturbed in their conscience;
they could not really be indifferent to the peace ideal ;

WORLD-PEACE 129

it dominated them as it had dominated Europe. And
before long America was once more on the move,
moving forward with an immense stride on lines of
her own in support of the peace ideal. The apparent
deserter reappeared in the light of a great reinforce-
ment at a critical moment in the struggle for world-
peace on the right lines. America is likely to become a
member of the International Court, and has initiated
a fundamental advance in the Peace Pact. What
appeared as a bad set-back in 1920 has been trans-
formed into a resounding victory in 1928, and
America is once more in the van of the great move-
ment towards world-peace. The League ideal has
won, and Wilson's Covenant is being completed by
the hands which tried to tear it up after the Peace.
Like the soul of John Brown, the Covenant goes
marching on, apparently benefiting as much from
defeat as from victory.

As all the members of the League, and practically
all the states outside it, have signed the Peace Pact, it
becomes part of the public law of the world. The
important question therefore arises what the effects
of the renunciation of war as an instrument of
national policy will be on the peace movement ; also,
how it will affect existing international law, and
especially the law of neutrality, which was based on the
opposite concept of the legality of war. International
law since the time of Grotius has assumed that war is
a legitimate activity of states; and the law of neutrality
arose from the conception that not only was war be-
tween two or more states permissible and legitimate,

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130 WORLD-PEACE

but that it was their private concern; that such a war
had no interest for other parties, who consequently
did not bother about its merits, and in carrying on
their ordinary commerce treated both parties to it on
a footing of absolute and impartial equality. On this
assumption the rules of neutrality in time of war have
been carefully and laboriously built up, particularly
the rules relating to the capture of private property
at sea, which figure under the general formula of
the Freedom of the Seas. Let us endeavour for a
few moments to see what the real scope of the Peace
Pact is and what changes in fundamental concepts it
will probably involve.

Although the Peace Pact was preceded by a lengthy
international correspondence in which various Powers
set forth their points of view and indicated the limits
within which they were willing to renounce war,
there are no reservations in the instrument itself,
which in terms is an absolute acceptance of the
principle of renunciation. Neither in the Pact nor in
its ratification by the Powers are reservations made.
Even the declaration of the United States Senate on
ratification, that the Pact did not lay any legal obliga-
tions on the United States to go to the assistance of
any state which might be attacked in violation of the
Pact, constitutes merely a statement of fact and no
reservation. So far, therefore, as the actual terms of
the Pact go, it is an unconditional acceptance by
practically all the states of the world of the renuncia-
tion of war as an instrument of national policy, and
an unconditional undertaking to seek their rights

WORLD-PEACE 131

only by peaceful means, through legal decision,
arbitration, and conciliation. The Covenant left it
open to a state to go to war, in case there had
been no unanimous arbitral award or recommenda-
tion by the League Council in any dispute. Absence
of unanimity in such a case left the position exactly
as it was under the old rules of international law;
either party to the dispute could legitimately resort
to war; no penalty was put on it for so doing, and in
case of war, the ordinary rules of neutrality applied
to states who were not participants in the war. It is
this opening for war which is now formally closed by
the solemn and unconditional undertaking of the
Peace Pact. It is, however, clear that even yet all
war is not proscribed under the Pact, but only war
as an instrument of national policy; in other words,
private war waged by a party for its own national
purposes. There remains the case of what is called
public war, where a state becomes involved in
war, not for its own individual ends, but for police
purposes in concert with others, in pursuance of
a public policy under a general instrument, such as
the Covenant of the League. Thus an aggressor, who
flouts a unanimous decision of the League, and goes
to war, will come under the ban of the Peace Pact ;
other members of the League who, under the pro-
vision of Article 16 of the Covenant, subject this
aggressor to an economic blockade, and in this way
become involved in a war with it, will be engaged in
a public war, and will not violate their undertaking
under the Peace Pact. Under the Peace Pact which,

i 3 2 WORLD-PEACE

in view of its universal signature, has become the
public law of the world, there will thus in future be
two categories of war : private war, waged for indi-
vidual national purposes, and public wars which are
accepted and waged as a matter of public inter-
national or police duty. Private wars are uncondi-
tionally banned and proscribed and as such can carry
no legal rights ; public wars remain permissible and
legal for general police purposes and the prevention
of public violence, and carry the usual incidents of
legal warfare under the rules of international law.
Thus a state involved in a public war will lawfully
exercise as against neutrals the ordinary rights of
search and capture in accordance with international
law, while one provoking a private war will not be
entitled to these rights. The distinction between
private and public wars, which follows logically from
the provision of the Peace Pact, therefore calls for a
supplementary general convention which will clarify
the position, define private and public wars, and ex-
pressly deprive those who resort to private war of
all rights as against neutrals. By thus bringing the
sanctions of international law to bear on the posi-
tion of parties resorting to private war, a very
powerful additional stimulus would be given to the
movement towards universal peace. Respectable
states are chary of going contrary to public opinion,
and they incur grave risks in so doing, as the Great
War has demonstrated. They will be far more chary
of embarking on a war which will involve their
proscription and outlawry by international law, and

WORLD-PEACE 133

their deprivation of such rights against neutrals as
they have been able heretofore to exercise legally in
the past. The loss of these rights would be a severe
penalty and act as a deterrent in most cases against
private war in future.

I would make a plea for such a convention, supple-
mentary to the Peace Pact and carrying its general
principles to their logical conclusions. The Peace
Pact is only a grand beginning, and its general
declarations should be followed up to their logical
details. If private war is illegal, and the party resort-
ing to it virtually a war outlaw, he must not only be
deprived of all rights against neutrals, but other
states should also undertake to have no dealings with
him, and should not render him indirect assistance
through the ordinary trade or financial channels. He
should be treated as an outlaw, as a pariah among the
nations; and this should be explicitly provided for.
Such a convention would incidentally solve two most
important problems, one affecting Anglo-American
relations, the other affecting the operation of the
Covenant. Let me briefly deal with these problems.

The United States has been the protagonist for
neutral rights in the past, and her claim to the Free-
dom of the Seas remains the one great open question
between the English speaking peoples, who to-day
play so important a role in the affairs of the world.
If this issue between them were eliminated, there is
no saying how fruitful their co-operation may become
in world politics, and how beneficent a part they may
possibly play in the maintenance of world peace in

136 WORLD-PEACE

affairs of the League, but the operation of the Peace
Pact will mean a close co-operation by the United
States from its free and independent position; and
for all practical purposes that will be quite enough.
One more difficulty remains. Under the Covenant
and in the League there is the difficulty of determin-
ing who is an aggressor against whom the economic
sanction of Article 1 6 should be applied. The League,
in spite of much thought and trouble, has not yet
found any satisfactory answer to this question. A
similar difficulty will now arise under the Peace Pact.
If private war breaks out, which state has resorted to
it as an instrument of national policy, and should there-
fore incur the penalty of proscription and outlawry
under the Peace Pact ? It may be that in neither case is
a theoretically satisfactory answer possible . But it may
also prove to be unnecessary. Perhaps here, as with
so many other great problems of life and action, a
water-tight theory may not be arrived at. And yet a
workable way may be found in practice. Solvitur
ambulando. Let me indicate one such practical way
towards world peace, which may also prove helpful
in identifying and pinning down the guilty party.
Under the Pacific Pact, concluded at Washington in
1921 between the Powers interested in the Pacific
Ocean, it was agreed that, whenever circumstances
arose which might threaten the peace, these Powers
would confer with each other and concert measures
for the prevention of war. The United States is a
party to this Pacific Conference, and Mr. Charles E.
Hughes has suggested that a similar arrangement

WORLD-PEACE 137

could be applied to all situations, wherever arising,
which might threaten the peace of the world. There
could be no objection to the United States being party
to such a General Conference system outside the
League. It would include all the Powers interested
in any area in which danger threatened; and in
practice the Conference would in most cases prove
effective in the keeping of the peace. If, in spite of
all efforts, war were to break out, the question as to
who is the real mischief-maker would have become
clear through the work of the Conference. A Con-
ference system similar to that under the Pacific Pact,
and on more or less informal lines parallel to the
League system, and including the United States and
possibly Russia, may be a most useful and effective
adjunct to the more elaborate peace system of the
League. And the convention which I suggest for
carrying out the Peace Pact might deal not only with
the question of outlawry and neutrality but might
also provide for such a Conference system, to which
not only members of the League but also those
Powers who are not League Members may adhere.
In this way the unique opening given by the Peace
Pact might be followed up, as it should be followed
up without delay. It is America's great contribution
towards world peace; it is her special approach to
the greatest problem of our time and of all time, and
in following it up we may therefore feel sure of her
co-operation. It lays down a principle which, if
sincerely carried to its logical conclusions, will take
us far towards our great goal.

3404.4 T

V
FUTURE TASKS OF THE LEAGUE

The League of Nations Union celebrated the
tenth anniversary of its foundation at a peace com-
memoration dinner held at the Guildhall \ London,
on November 14. General Smuts was the chief
guest, and in reply to the toast of the League of
Nations spoke as follows:

FUTURE TASKS OF THE LEAGUE

IN the few minutes alloted to me I can only refer
to a couple of points, and that in the briefest and
most summary manner. But however short the time
at my disposal I should not express what I feel most
deeply, if I omitted to pay my small tribute to the
magnificent work which the League of Nations Union
has been carrying on. The educative and propaganda
work of the Union has been of priceless value to the
cause of peace. Its organization has been above party
and cuts across all parties. It has drawn to it those
men and women who really believe in world peace.
To me, personally, it has been a consolation that, in
the trying years behind us, South Africa could help
the good cause by nominating Lord Cecil and Profes-
sor Gilbert Murray as South African representatives
on the councils of the League. What these two men
in particular have done for the League and this
Union it would be impossible to exaggerate.

The public have helped generously with funds and
must continue to help. There is to-day no better
form of missionary enterprise than this service of the
cause of world peace. Let us continue to make our
contributions to this mission of peace and goodwill
among men.

In making our money contributions to the Union
we are not only helping to realize a great ideal, but

i 4 2 FUTURE TASKS OF THE LEAGUE
we are in a very real sense paying our small insurance
against the greatest danger that threatens civilization.
About the present position of the League I only wish
to say this : the League has passed through many ups
and downs during its first ten years. It is true that our
highest hopes of ten years ago have not been realized ;
but neither have the dismal predictions of the critics
of the League come true. On the whole it has fol-
lowed a course of its own, and has quietly made good ;
and more recently its prospects have brightened in
a very encouraging way. Germany, which was sus-
pected and feared as a source of future danger to the
League, has quite unexpectedly become an active
member and a source of real strength to the League,
and of support to all the good causes for which it
stands. The United States, which was supposed to be
indifferent, or even hostile, to the League, is going to
join the World Court. The Optional Clause is at last
becoming a reality, and an immense extension will
thereby be given to the judicial side of the League's
activities. The Peace Pact, which the United States
has sponsored, has been signed, and has gone far to-
wards closing the gap left in the Covenant . The happy
conversations between the President of the United
States and the British Prime Minister have given a new
turn to the disarmament movement, and the forth-
coming Naval Conference will open with every pros-
pect of success. Last, not least, comes the great speech
of President Hoover on Monday , November 1 1 , which
must have been read with the deepest pleasure by
every supporter of the League. There was a note of

FUTURE TASKS OF THE LEAGUE 143
optimism in it and a ring of sincerity which are good
auguries for the future. We especially welcome the
forecast of the President that there is going to be not
merely a patch-up of the naval question on a basis of
parities and ratios, but 'a serious reduction in navies
as a relief to the economic burdens of the peoples'.
It is clear that at last business is meant with disarma-
ment, and we look forward with the deepest interest
to the success of this policy.

In spite of all the good and hard work which has
been done, very heavy tasks confront the League. As
I understand the position to-day, there are three
great problems before the League and the whole
peace movement. The first is that of disarmament.
If a serious reduction of navies is decided upon next
January the way will be open for an attack on the more
difficult subject of military and aerial disarmament.
Of these two, aerial disarmament is the more urgent
and important, as aerial warfare constitutes by far the
more serious danger to civilization. It means ruthless
warfare not against the armed forces of the enemy but
against his civilian population, with the consequent
destruction of cities and population behind the lines.
The position with regard to air warfare is still in the
fluid, formative stage; air forces are rapidly growing
in many countries, and should therefore be dealt with
without further delay. The menace to this country
in particular from the air is more serious than any
other which it has to face. Military disarmament is
a far more thorny problem, and will probably require,
and should receive, more patient handling.

144 FUTURE TASKS OF THE LEAGUE

The second great problem before the League is no
less important, and perhaps even more far-reaching
in its bearings. It is the problem of justice. Our ideal
is not merely peace, but peace with justice. There is
no doubt that war has in the past sometimes served as
a solvent for intolerable situations ; it has sometimes
destroyed the bulwarks of ancient wrong and opened
the way to necessary reforms and readjustments. If
war in future is to be rendered impossible, we must
see to it that its function, in so far as it has been
beneficent in the past, be discharged by some other
means. Peace must be dynamic; it must keep the
door open to reform and to freedom, and must not
become an incubus on human progress. The springs
of reform, of progress, and of freedom must not
be frozen under a deadly peace. Peace must be the
handmaiden of justice in the new world towards which
mankind is marching. This position was clearly fore-
seen by the framers of the Covenant, and Article 19
calls for means by which obsolete or intolerable
situations can be abolished. The creation of such
machinery, and its careful working under proper
safeguards, will be one of the greatest and most diffi-
cult tasks of the League. The time is rapidly ap-
proaching when this task will have to be faced.
Otherwise all our machinery of peace, our World
Court, our arbitration tribunals, and other legal
agencies will merely serve to entrench the status quo,
and render the danger of future explosions all the
greater.

The third great problem before the peace move-

FUTURE TASKS OF THE LEAGUE 145
ment concerns the question, what has to be done with
a disturber of the peace ? War may arise in future in
spite of the Covenant and in spite of the Peace Pact,
and, if allowed to spread, may envelop the world in
flames, as we saw in the Great War. It is clear
that the question of the policy to be adopted towards
the aggressor, or the disturber of the peace, or the
party resorting to war to further national policy,
cannot be settled inside the League alone, but requires
agreement between the League members and the
United States. The question calls for settlement, but
there is still serious disagreement as to the policy to
be followed. President Hoover says that the Covenant
means the application of force by other members of
the League, and that the United States is confident
that public opinion will suffice to check violence.
But is there not a middle way open which both the
League members and the United States may follow,
without prejudice to their divergent viewpoints ? Both
have signed the Peace Pact, and are bound to see to it
that this great instrument does not become a dead
letter. To both, therefore, we may fairly say: Follow
up the Peace Pact. Do not leave its general declara-
tion in the air, so to say ; but carry it to its reasonable
conclusion. If that is done, it may be found, as I
pointed out at Oxford last Saturday, 1 that important
changes in international law will become necessary,
which will render the position of the violator of the
Peace Pact untenable, if not impossible. There will
be no question of the application of force, but there
1 Pp. 130-7.

3404.4

146 FUTURE TASKS OF THE LEAGUE
will be consequential changes of the laws of neutrality
which will have the most far-reaching results, both
for future peace and for the settlement of current
controversies. The Peace Pact with its far-reaching
implications not only affords an unrivalled opportu-
nity for the strengthening of the peace position ; it also
offers a bridge between the divergent views on peace
methods held on both sides of the Atlantic. This
unique opportunity should therefore be exploited to
the full.

I confess that I am doubtful about the suggestion
of the President in reference to the immunity of food
ships. I doubt whether methods of humanizing
private war will ever really serve a useful purpose.
That was the road followed in the era preceding the
Great War. As soon, however, as the first shot was
fired these humanizing expedients went by the board.
It will always be so. War cannot be effectively
humanized; its utter inhumanity and inexpressible
barbarity will be its undoing and will work the cure,
and not attempts at rendering it more humane to the
innocent. The axe has been laid to the root of the
tree ; let us keep hewing there. Under the Peace Pact
mankind has definitely and unanimously declared war
against war. Let us not in any way weaken or recede
from that position.

Let us develop the conference system, both for
members and non-members of the League. The
spirit of conference is the very soul of the peace
movement. Such conferences will in most cases
prove effective in keeping the peace, and if war should

FUTURE TASKS OF THE LEAGUE 147
break out they will disclose the mischief-maker. Such
conferences may also lead to concerted action in
regard to any special immunities for food ships and
the like, under very exceptional circumstances which
may arise. But no general rules should be laid down
in advance, which will make the way of the trans-
gressor easier for the future.

VI
DEMOCRACY

VI
DEMOCRACY'

THIS visit to Cambridge is a great occasion for
me, and I look upon it as an honour and a
privilege. I could not have come to lecture before
the sister university without also paying a visit
to my Alma Mater; natural piety and the great
memories of the past alone would have prevented
that. I was therefore grateful for the invitation of
the Principal of Newnham College to come and
deliver the Sidgwick Memorial lecture this term,
as it gave me the welcome opportunity for this visit
and of addressing my friends in my old university.

My memory goes back to the Cambridge of a
generation ago, in which Henry Sidgwick was one
of the foremost figures. I had not the advantage of
attending his courses on philosophy, and have
regretted this ever since, in proportion as my own
interest in philosophical subjects has deepened. But
I followed his course on politics, and this must be
my excuse for taking a political theme for my lecture
to-day. Sidgwick had not only a singularly acute
mind, but very wide intellectual and social sym-
pathies, which dominated his outlook on life, and
made his philosophy in a large measure subservient
to social service in the widest sense. Hence his un-
remitting efforts for University reform; hence his

1 Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, delivered at Newnham College,
Cambridge, on 30 November 1929.

iS2 DEMOCRACY

continuous efforts on behalf of women's education,
and his great work in connexion with the foundation
and progress of this College. Hence also his interest
in politics, both in its theoretical and practical
aspects. Although his highly critical mind made
him averse to all catchwords and popular phrases,
he was a convinced believer in political liberty, and
in the institutions to which it has given birth in the
modern world. A brief discussion of the present
position of Democracy would therefore not be out
of place in a memorial lecture, and it might serve a
useful purpose in drawing attention to one or two of
the changes in political institutions, to which the
present tendencies seem to point. Democracy is no
longer accepted at its face value, and its institutions
are being more and more subjected to hostile, and even
destructive, criticism. A summary review of a few of
its main features in the brief time at my disposal may
therefore not be inappropriate or devoid of value.

In one of his most famous and resounding phrases,
Woodrow Wilson declared that the Great War was
being fought to make the world safe for democracy.
Events since the Great War have raised the question,
however, in many quarters whether democracy is
safe for the world. There has been a widespread
disillusion over democracy; over half of Europe it
has ceased to function as the mainspring of political
institutions, and its place has been taken by forms of
dictatorship, either of the one or the minority, which
are a negation of the essence of democracy. Nor can
it be said that these substitutes for democracy pro-

DEMOCRACY 153

mise to be a real improvement on it. Bolshevism in
Russia, whatever its future may be, has proved to
be one of the most destructive experiments in history,
and has led to more human misery and to greater
economic and industrial decay than would have been
thought possible in a great European community.
Fascism in Italy, again, in spite of its temporary suc-
cess, resembles nothing so much as Vesuvius in one
of its periods of quiescence; anxiety over what will
happen next spoils the doubtful satisfaction over the
present. The fact is that, while there is great and
widespread dissatisfaction with present political
democracy, no better alternative as a basis of
government has yet presented itself, and the politi-
cally more advanced democracies of the world con-
tinue to move on the old lines, more from a sense
of convenience, however, than from conviction. The
active co-operation of the governed in their govern-
ment still holds the field as the first axiom of political
philosophy. But a subtle change is coming over the
scene. With all the far-reaching changes taking
place in all departments of life and thought, political
institutions are in a sense also in the melting-pot.
Human government seems to be outgrowing its
political clothes; social and political needs arc chang-
ing, political fashions are changing, and there is a
growing spirit of unrest in the air, and a growing
readiness to make political experiments. There is no
doubt that mankind at least politically-conscious
mankind is switching over, in some countries vio-
lently, and in others more quietly and constitution-

3404.4 ^^ v

iS4 DEMOCRACY

ally, from the old to new lines in political govern-
ment, and a great deal of fundamental thinking will
be required to make the change over as frictionless
as possible.

The most far-reaching change which is taking place
to-day in human affairs is in the sphere of international
relations; but it will not remain confined to those
relations. The international is taking its place along-
side of the national in the affairs of mankind.
Hitherto human government has been moving on
national lines, and international relations have been
subsidiary, a sort of by-product of the national
situation. But a change is coming in this subordinate
status of the international. The League of Nations
is the great new fact, and its ideal of the abolition of
war as an instrument of national policy, which is now
taking firm shape, is going to transform the national
situation, and in the end to remould the forms as well
as the spirit of national government. This is perhaps
not yet realized, except very vaguely, and it may be
useful to consider more closely the essential difference
between the existing national and the growing inter-
national system.

The difference is not between state and super-
state, as it is sometimes put. The League of Nations
is not the beginnings of a superstate which is destined
to swallow the present national states, and in that
way to abolish nationalism. That has not been the
conception of its founders, and if any such develop-
ment is ever to take place in future, the present basis
of the League will have to be radically recast. The

DEMOCRACY 155

League was not conceived or founded to function as
a superstate. For that, its constitution would have
to be quite different. It presupposes the national
states and their continued existence. It is at present
no more than an honest broker between states; a
liaison of a new, regular, authoritative character. It
does not displace states, but puts itself in the gap
between them. It becomes the buffer which receives
the shocks and absorbs the differences. At present
it is only the wise broad-minded circumspect coun-
sellor of kings. If in the end it becomes more, if in
time the wise counsellor becomes the Prime Minister,
whose advice is bound to be followed, that will be
an unforeseen and unprovided-for development, and
in any case it is so remote a contingency that we need
not trouble about it to-day. The great change for the
future will not be due to the status or the structure
of the League as a superstate, which it is not, but to
its functions as the pacificator, preventing wars and
removing causes of differences between states.

Let us consider for a moment what that means.
War is, or at least has been, the chief instrument of
national policy. The state has been defined as the
worship of power. The greatness and power of the
state is the pride and the ideal of its citizens, for which
they are prepared to sacrifice their property and, in
the last resort, their lives. The state incarnates the
passion of nationalism which has been the most
powerful factor in modern history ; and the last and
chief weapon of the national state is war. In the
competition for aggrandizement and power between

i S 6 DEMOCRACY

states, there is in the last resort no other arbiter but
war. War as an instrument of national policy
becomes all-important to the state ; the glory of the
state means the glorification of war. Owing to the
absence in modern times of all other machinery to
mediate between states, the role of war has become
dominant, and war has in a large measure written
the history of the world. The ridicule poured on
text -books of history because of the emphasis they
lay on wars has not been really justified. The
importance of war has not been exaggerated; the
text -books have only gone astray in neglecting other
important factors. War was the greatest act of state
of the nations ; and it was war that made peace be-
tween them. We have seen a most illuminating
illustration of that in our own time. The Versailles
Peace was the latest, let us pray that it will remain
the last, chief political act of the old order in fact the
final act of the old war system, which has prevailed
throughout history. Those who looked upon the
Peace of 1919 as the new beginning, the foundation of
the new world, expected too much. It was only by a
miracle that the Peace Treaty contained the seeds of
the new order which was to arise in the world. The
first chapter of the Peace Treaty, containing the
Covenant of the League, was an anachronism from
the point of view of the whole instrument. At that
one point, and there only, the new spirit burst
through the old shell. Everywhere else we had a
peace which was the consummation of the war. In
that last supreme effort of the national system, with

DEMOCRACY 157

governments and leaders such as the war had thrown
up, only a War peace could be expected, and that
we got at Versailles. It was the last and ripest fruit
of the old system. Settlement by war, war as the
instrument of national policy; and a peace which
reflected the mentality in which the war had been
fought and which garnered its fruits: such was the
old system, as it existed in 1919 and as it had existed
from the beginning. The important point is that
war was the very essence of the old system. In the
great clashes of national ambitions, inflamed and
rendered implacable by national passions and suffer-
ings and injustices, there was really nothing else to
decide under the old system but power the power
of the sword.

From this it follows that, if war as an instrument
of national policy is to disappear, the influence of
national passions in international affairs will have to be
seriously moderated and as far as possible eliminated.
War is the child of national passions, of an inflamed
unwholesome mentality, springing from groundless
or exaggerated fears or ambitions, usually from both
combined. The most effective means of preventing
war would be the cure of this national soul-sickness ;
or if it could not be cured outright, it could at least
be moderated, and its baneful influence on inter-
national relations rendered less effective. Of course,
the sense of security against war would be the best
antidote to this disease. If the conviction becomes
general that the League, and the influences behind
it, can be relied on to keep the peace, both the fear

158 DEMOCRACY

of aggression and the ambition for aggrandizement
would abate of themselves, and the inflammation
which causes war would naturally subside. Our best
efforts should therefore be directed towards making
the League a reality, towards increasing its authority
and prestige, and thus towards strengthening the
atmosphere of security, in which the danger of war
would of itself diminish and eventually disappear.
The peaceful mentality could best be created by
increasing the popular faith in the League, the general
conviction that it is not a make-believe but a growing
reality in the life of the world. The continual decry-
ing of the League in certain quarters, the occasional
failure of the League to rise to the occasion, the
continued maintenance of bloated armaments even
by those who profess to believe in the League, all
combine to shake public confidence in it, to injure
its credit and prestige, and to keep alive that atmo-
sphere of uncertainty and fear which breeds the pest
of war. While everything should be done by the
Powers to support the League in its difficult task and
to bring success to its endeavours, the organs of
public opinion, the press and parliament and pulpit,
should give it their warm support. Most important
of all, an atmosphere favourable to the League and a
peaceful co-operative international order should be
fostered among the young, and especially through
the school curriculum.

During the ten years of its existence the League
has made great progress, and its prestige is to-day
happily very different from what it was in its first

DEMOCRACY 159

years. This progress should be maintained at all
costs for the future. But although improvement and
progress are possible along these lines, it would not
be wise to rely on this possibility alone. It will take
a long time for the fires that smoulder in the Old
World to die down; and these fires are still con-
tinually being fanned by an irresponsible press and
powerful interests. It is still so easy to mislead and
delude the public by playing on their national
passions that it will not be safe to rely on the growth
of a favourable mentality alone for the maintenance
of world-peace. We should look also to other means
of diminishing the pressure which unwholesome
national sentiment may exert on affairs. National
sentiment in international relations should no longer
play such an overwhelming part, and means should
be found through new institutions to moderate its
excessive influence. I am going to suggest such an
institution or new organ of government. And in my
opinion it is all the more urgently called for, because
something is wanted to counteract new disturbing
influences which are appearing in the state to-day.
For while the peace movement of our day calls
for a real advance in public opinion, other contem-
porary movements appear to be in an opposite
direction. The wise guidance of public opinion
becomes ever more difficult and uncertain.

Owing to the spread of education and the reading
habit, the pervasive influence of the press and the
kinema, and numerous other forms of public and
private propaganda, the massed force of public

160 DEMOCRACY

opinion is every day becoming greater and more
incalculable, and to politicians more terrifying. It is
no longer the elected representatives of the people
who mainly guide and interpret the popular mind in
matters political. The politician to-day often plays a
quite minor role in the formation and guidance of
public opinion. He is often more a puppet than a
guide in public affairs. Compared to the other
younger more virile organs of public opinion, parlia-
ment itself is becoming of less and less importance.
This is notoriously the case even in constitutionally
governed countries, while in others parliament,
except as a form, has disappeared. Universal suf-
frage has not improved our type of legislator. While
the growing intricacy of public questions makes
politics an all-time job calling for great knowledge
and devotion, the electorate not uncommonly chooses
the more shallow and showy type of amateur who
can be most profuse in promises. This has affected
the position and character of parliament. From an
attitude of respect to parliament, the public have
passed to one of indifference and boredom. Political
meetings also have altered their character, and are
often attended more for the by-play and the fun
than for serious discussion or political enlighten-
ment; and this change is reflected in the scrappy
press reports of such meetings. With this change in
public opinion has gone a change in the status of
public men of which they are only too conscious
themselves. They are aware that they do not count
any more in the old way, that their prestige has

DEMOCRACY 161

suffered and their influence on affairs has declined.
In spite of the continuance of the old parliamen-
tary forms, their authority is no longer what it was.
As a consequence their old sense of confidence and
responsibility has also declined. There is thus a
subtle change of values which is acting like a solvent
on the old democratic ideas. It is not so much
criticism or attack of representative institutions
which has done the damage; there has been an im-
palpable change in the public mind, and the organs
and institutions and personnel of human govern-
ment have insensibly depreciated in popular values.
In this loss of authority they suffer with most of the
other institutions of our civilization. Authority is
no longer accepted as an unquestioned fact and at
its face value ; it is asked for its credentials or, what
is worse, it is simply passed by silently and ignored.
It is true that government has suffered less in prestige
than parliament, and the decline of parliament has
even tended to concentrate more responsibility and
power in the hands of government. But even so,
statesmen do not feel on as firm ground as formerly ;
they have lost the old sense of security before the
new incalculable forces and movements of public
opinion. In this uncertainty and bewilderment they
are often less inclined to stand up to the vagaries of
public opinion ; their self-confidence has been under-
mined, and the tendency to move with the tide of
opinion is more pronounced than before. While the
situation calls for supermen, the uncertainties and
vacillations of public opinion seem in fact to have a

3404.4 Y

162 DEMOCRACY

paralysing effect, and to lead to more opportunism and
drifting. This is the case not only in domestic affairs,
but also in the domain of international affairs. In
this arena, which has always been dominated by the
national passions the fears, suspicions, and ambitions
of the nations the position has become more difficult
than ever, owing to the vastly increased force and
volume of public opinion. And leadership to meet
this situation has on the whole weakened; states-
men, even the most powerful and influential, show
less inclination to stand up to the passions of their
peoples than before. There was for instance more
courage shown at the Congress of Vienna after the
Napoleonic War than at Versailles after the Great
War. The press was less vocal and public opinion
was less inflamed and violent. Politicians to-day are
often baffled and almost paralysed by the incalculable
forces of public opinion that surround them. The
position therefore often arises that in very difficult
situations the politicians as the representatives of
public opinion have to be cut out, and the handling
of the problems entrusted to impartial experts who
are not dependent on public opinion.

As an instance, I may mention the Reparation
question, which has had to be removed from the
venue of politics, has had to be taken away from
the diplomats and the statesmen, and entrusted to a
committee of financial and economic experts. Ex-
perts are not dominated by and dependent on public
opinion in the same way as the statesmen. They are of
course fully aware of the state of feeling among their

DEMOCRACY 163

peoples, they may even share that feeling to a large
extent. But they are not dependent on that feeling,
and they are first and foremost dominated by a sense
of the facts, by a profound knowledge of what is
financially possible, and by scientific principles which
transcend the desires of men. And in dealing with a
situation, which is not merely surrounded by intense
popular feelings and illusions, but which above all
calls for knowledge of fixed principles and for expert
skill, they have successfully pointed out the way
which the statesmen have had largely to follow.
The Dawes and Young Commissions were not only
valuable because of the great work they did, but
even more so because they are typical of a new
method of dealing with such questions. In the storm
and stress of our time, a new mechanism is thus
being evolved and put into the vast growing machine
of human government. Of course there is nothing
new in commissions; it is an old dodge of govern-
ments to meet awkward or complicated situations
with a Royal Commission. But the Dawes and
Young Commissions differ from such bodies in
many important respects. They actually tackled a
problem which had repeatedly been before govern-
ments and had been found to be insoluble by them.
They applied the forces of science and expert skill
and wisdom to a problem which had been hopelessly
vitiated by human prejudice. And they succeeded
in finding a solution, however temporary in character
it may prove to be. These Commissions marshalled
the new forces of science against the forces of

164 DEMOCRACY

popular sentiment; the battle took place, not in the
calm regions of science but in the storm area of
politics where passion had usually been victorious.
And in that battle science won a victory, not only
notable in itself, but far-reaching as a pointer on the
future road of human government. Democracy is
not enough. The fierce and implacable spirit of
nationalism, of national egoism, which democracy
incidentally represents, is not enough. National
egoism and war are twin sister and brother. If war
is to go, the other must go too, or at least its malign
influence in the affairs of the world must be abated
or neutralized. To make the new peace order func-
tion successfully, it is necessary to provide for new
machinery which will be less directly under the
pressure of public opinion than the politicians are,
and needs must be, in a democratic state.

The position here is entirely paralleled by the
development historically of peace and good order
within the state or the nation. To suppress private
feuds and vendettas or factional disturbances within
the nation a system of resort to judicial experts was
evolved. The decision of the quarrel was entrusted
to men of recognized ability and impartiality, wise
men skilled in the law and clothed by public opinion
with the necessary authority. Private peace is based
on the finding of the judicial expert, who does not
enforce his own judgement ; he leaves it to the
government or executive power to carry it out; but
its execution by the government becomes in course
of time the accepted routine. In the same way the

DEMOCRACY 165

new peace system of the nations necessitates a resort
to the impartial judicial or scientific expert. Highly
trained experts, with wide experience of affairs, and
standing aloof from the political game, are called in
to declare the principles of settlement, leaving it to
the national governments, separately or in conference,
to carry them out. In the new order of things this has
become necessary machinery, just as necessary pro-
bably as are the law courts in a state, if justice and
f airplay are to prevail between nations, and the undue
influence of national passions is to be eliminated from
the settlement of international differences. It is only
the novelty of the matter which makes us fail to
appreciate its far-reaching importance for the future,
and its necessity for the normal functioning of the
new peace system. But the beginning has been made,
fitfully and sporadically it is true; but in course of
time the precedent of to-day will become the basis of
the regular routine and the normal procedure of the
nations in their common affairs. Just as kings and
statesmen were not enough for the affairs of the
nation, and judges became necessary to declare and
apply the law, so statesmen are not enough to solve
the problems which arise in international affairs.
The national passions on which they are dependent
for power, and the mass complexes often dominating
and blinding the popular mind, leave them no real
chance and make wise action most difficult. The one
statesman at the Peace Conference who took his
courage in both hands and saw his great ideal
through, was immediately afterwards broken on the

1 66 DEMOCRACY

wheel by the greatest democracy of the world. It is
not fair to expect the impossible from men who
represent, first and foremost, not abstract ideals, but
their own peoples with their national view-points and
prejudices. The nations must become accustomed to
look to the organized system of the expert report
which gives a just and impartial lead to governments
and public opinion, and which should be regularly
accepted just as judicial decisions are accepted as a
matter of course. The Permanent Court of Inter-
national Justice, acting within the purely legal
domain, should be paralleled by a system of expert
international advisers, who will have no executive
power, but whose authority in the domain of applied
science, finance, and all the vastly intricate problems
which confront the modern world, will be as readily
accepted and will be as unquestioned as that of the
International Court itself.

The matter may be put in an even wider historic
and scientific setting. Judicial institutions arose in
human society because law was the only science in
which expertness was recognized at that early date.
Religion was left to the priestly order, who in the still
undifferentiated domain of theology, magic, and medi-
cine had unquestioned authority. From this theo-
cratic complex, law was early segregated as the first
science standing by itself and demanding an institu-
tion of its own. This segregation was of course
entirely due to the lawlessness and feuds existing
within the community, and the necessity to compose
them. Wise men, skilled in the customs of the tribe

DEMOCRACY 167

and in its ancient lore, came to be recognized as
authorities, and were called in to handle the quarrels
of the families and the groups. And in time these
skilled exponents of the law of the tribe became the
judges and the tribunals to decide disputes and settle
differences within the tribe, and later within the
nation or state. Thus law arose as the first science
and was recognized by the state in an authoritative
way. Law is the oldest but no longer the only science.
The rise of the sciences, of Science, is the most out-
standing fact of the modern world, and has led to the
most far-reaching changes in human view-points, in
human betterment, in individual and national power.
Eventually it will lead to the greatest changes in
human government. The rise has been so sudden that
our political institutions have not yet had time even
to begin adjusting themselves to the new situation.
But science is necessary to the modern state and
should have its functional relation to the state. Not
only the discoveries of science, but the mature, sober,
impartial spirit of science is what is above all else
necessary for the functioning of the modern state, and
of the new international system. Science is first and
foremost an attitude, an outlook, a method of acquir-
ing knowledge, and in the second place it is a body
of results and truths. In both respects science is
essential to the working of the state. The discoveries
and teachings of science are the most powerful
weapons with which man is fighting to-day the battle
of life, and overcoming the evils and the drawbacks
that beset our human lot, and this all-important fact

i68 DEMOCRACY

should be reflected in our system of government. In
view of all this it is a curious fact that science is not
yet an organized government service anywhere in the
world. I have, however, no doubt that the rapidly
growing influence of science in all departments of
human activity and of government will yet lead to
a far more important place for science in the organiza-
tion of the state in future. It may yet become the
governing factor in our human organization, whether
that organization will take the form of government or
something better than government which may evolve
in course of time. But apart from the power and
results of science, we want to-day the scientific spirit
in human affairs. Its method is that of complete im-
partiality and absolute respect for fact and for truth.
Human desires do not enter into the purview of the
scientist in trying to solve a natural problem. Philo-
sophers have attributed a moral indifference to nature :
I think wrongly. But there is an emotional indiffer-
ence of science, which is its very essence and ideal.
Emotions, desires, passions carry no weight in the
balance of science. Illusions do not count with
science. Science is cured of the childish belief that
what is desired must be true or must exist ; hence I
have spoken of the maturity of the scientific spirit. It
is this spirit which above all is to-day called for in the
administration of human affairs. As justice is said to
be blind, so science is deaf and blind to illusion and
passion; it deals with facts on their merits. And as
applied to human affairs it means the sober pursuit
of the truth, the single desire to know things as they

DEMOCRACY 169

are, and to assign values according to the facts; to
find solutions which will be in accord with nature's
laws, and not the dictates of human self-interest. To
me there is something divine in this lofty ideal which
is the very essence of science. The application of the
true scientific spirit to human affairs, if it were
humanly possible, would mean such a reign of justice
and fair play on earth as only poets have dreamt of.
The cool, serious, gentle spirit of science is, above
all, wanted in the storm-tossed domain of inter-
national affairs. And the scientific expert, for whom
I am pleading as a regular institution in public affairs,
may prove a most valuable link in the international
organization of the future. He will function normally
and dispassionately, whatever international storm
may rage outside; and his findings will be quietly
accepted in the end, as the higher wisdom and the
better way.

But it is not only in international affairs that this
new link of the scientific expert is called for. If
Democracy is to last it will have to be introduced also
into our system of national government. As I have
already explained, the power of the Press and of other
forms of publicity is leading to such an inflation of
public opinion and popular and party passions, that
statesmen have comparatively little scope nowadays,
and find it more and more difficult to impose their
wills. As a result we have governmental drift, stagna-
tion, and impotence. By a direct road we march to
Fascism and the like. Men will not sit down under
intolerable evils simply because their government is

3404.4 Z

170 DEMOCRACY

supine. These dubious expedients are resorted to
when government does not function normally and
wholesomely ; and the impotence of the government
is often due, not so much to the people, as to a serious
defect in the machinery of government. A moderator
or regulator ought to be introduced which will tone
down democratic excesses in a way which the political
government is not capable of. It ought to become
recognized that the scientific political expert is a
necessary institution in national government. Great
party disputes, which threaten the tranquillity or the
progress of the state, should be remitted to a body of
experts, whose personal characters and reputations
confer exceptional authority on them, and whose
recommendations should be available as a guide for
public opinion and the government. Between the
public, played upon and worked up by a storm of
public opinion on the one hand, and the popular
leaders on the other, should be interpolated this new
institution of expert scientific advisers, who will
moderate the public excitement, and bring the ques-
tion in issue down to the bed-rock of fact. Where the
government has to fight the fires of public opinion
single-handed, and heroically does its duty, it usually
gets burnt in the end, and punished by the loss of
public favour. It gets punished, not for its sins but
for its virtues, and its enemies rule in its place. The
inevitable effect must be a weakening of the sense
of responsibility in public men, an inclination cynic-
ally to move with the tide, to 'dish' one's opponents
and remain in office a little longer. Hence weak-

DEMOCRACY 171

ness, vacillation, opportunism take the place of real
courageous statesmanship, and all good causes suffer
because of the defects of the democratic system.

To students of politics it must be evident that there
is already a strong tendency in the direction I am
advocating. Knotty industrial questions with a strong
political taint are tending more and more to be re-
mitted to expert inquiry. But it is necessary for the
adoption of the new system that these inquiries should
become more systematic and regularized, and that
commissions of inquiry should be most carefully and
impartially chosen , and their recommendations carried
out, unless there is the strongest case to the contrary.
The failure for reasons of party policy to carry out
such recommendations makes the new system impos-
sible, and often leads to disastrous consequences, as
you will know from many recent instances which
I need not mention.

Apart from the factors already noticed, the work of
government is rendered more difficult to-day by the
unprecedented concentration of tasks with which it is
confronted. The task of administration is very dif-
ferent from what it was even a generation ago. The
sphere of government activities has extended enor-
mously, its duties have multiplied in all directions,
and the new work is largely of an intricate and com-
plex character. The burden is continually growing
owing to demands for new services, and it is over-
taxing the capacity of the old machine. The machine
becomes heavy and cumbrous, the wheels become
clogged and cease to go round with normal smooth-

172 DEMOCRACY

ness. The whole system of government tends to be-
come top-heavy and to get out of gear. The machine
has to be continually overhauled and brought up to
date. We often blame the personnel when we should
rather blame the out-of-date machine which they are
called upon to work. In political policy, too, it is some-
times less the spirit of the people than faulty methods
that makes for failure. I am optimist enough to be-
lieve that there is on the whole and in the long run
sufficient good sense and practical wisdom in the
people to make for good government and sound
policy. There are of course moments of aberration,
occasions when one or other section of the people
seems to lose their heads, and things are done for
which it, as well as the nation, pays dearly. But these
are the exceptional lapses from habitual good sense.
On the whole a well-trained European community
can be safely trusted to do the best for itself under
normal circumstances. If things go wrong, it is often
the wrong political method that has been pursued, or
a faulty institution that has functioned. Political in-
stitutions often make all the difference between good
and bad government. A people may have the sense
of what is right, and desire to follow it, and yet in-
adequate institutions may stultify that desire. The
rules of procedure and debate in a legislature, for
instance, may reduce it to impotence. Society is in
its essence dynamic and organic, and our political
institutions require continual reshaping if we wish
to get good results out of them. The fundamental
principles of government, the ground-plan of the

DEMOCRACY 173

democratic system, may be quite sound, but the de-
tailed organization may become out of date. In that
way the breakdown comes about. The city-state of
antiquity, with the direct participation of all citizens
in the assembly, succeeded for a time in producing
the most wonderful results. But the time came when,
with the extension of state activities beyond the
bounds of the city, the multitude of counsellors only
produced embarrassment, indecision, and inefficiency,
and finally led to a complete breakdown, and a rever-
sion to the old tyrannies.

The nation-state of the modern world, again, with
its indirect representation and parliamentary system,
has functioned very well up to recent years, but is
now becoming a much more difficult machine to
work, owing to universal suffrage, the mass move-
ments of public opinion, the multiplication of govern-
mental activities, and the immense complication of
modern industrial and other conditions. The men
to direct and work so great a machine are not easy to
find, and yet the people are supposed to find them
with the crudest means of popular choice. The wrong
men are often selected ; and even if the right men rise
to the top, they are often inexperienced, and are not
there long enough to learn to run their complicated
job properly. Hence the risk of inertia and drift, per-
haps one of the greatest dangers before the govern-
ment of to-day. Urgent problems clamour in all
directions, but the good man is absent or delays; and
the job is in consequence entrusted to the blundering
improvisor and the 'chancer', whose methods of

i 7 4 DEMOCRACY

hustle and noise appeal to the people, and especially

to the sensational press.

It is evident that under such conditions very great
power becomes concentrated in the hands of the civil
service. This power behind the throne has been
steadily growing in influence with the rise of the
modern state and the growing complication of
the functions of government. Beneficent if kept
under proper control, it becomes an unmitigated
bureaucracy if it assumes control itself, as it tends to
do under weak and rapidly changing governments.
In some European countries, and notably in Russia,
the bureaucracy has been the real cause of revolution.
The uncontrolled service ceases to be the loyal ser-
vant, and becomes parasitical on the country; even
governments become its puppets, and in the end it
comes to exercise authority for its own ends, and not
for the public good. An ideal public service would go
far to supply the deficiencies of democratic govern-
ment, with its vacillation and inexpertness. But in
the complicated organism of the state, any organ
which becomes independent of the rest becomes a
danger, and nothing is so dangerous to the state as a
public service which does not march with the people,
and becomes a drag on well-ordered progress ; it may
even have to be dynamited out of its fixed position.
Against the growing tendency towards bureaucracy in
the public service, only strong governments can pro-
tect the people, and democracy does not, under
present conditions, tend to produce strong govern-
ments. And so the vicious circle continues. Human

DEMOCRACY 175

government can be no better in the end than human
nature, and popular self-government will continue to
be a difficult machine to work in practice, until the
political education of the people has reached a very
much higher level.

The end of government is not merely good govern-
ment, but the education of the people in good govern-
ment, its self-education in running its own affairs.
Even at the price of less efficient government let the
people by all means gain its own experience and
develop its own capacity for self-government. The
short cuts do not really bring us much farther, except
to the next turn of the wheel of revolution. Liberty
as a form of political government is a difficult experi-
ment, and it is not without its dangers, as I have
pointed out. But it is at any rate less dangerous than
its alternatives, and under modern conditions it is
probably the only political system that promises to
endure. The consent of the governed is the only
secure and lasting basis of government, and liberty is
the condition of consent. Only free men can consent
to their form of government. Where there is no free-
dom and no consent, there must be a basis of force;
the one or the minority in control can keep the
majority in check only by means of force or domina-
tion, which is utterly repugnant to the new tendencies
which are shaping political developments to-day.
Bolshevism and Fascism, which are the current alter-
natives to democratic liberty, may be defended as a
way out of intolerable situations, but they are tem-
porary expedients, often tried and discarded before,

176 DEMOCRACY

and they will be discarded again after the present
trials. The only political philosophy which holds the
field is that which recognizes the fundamental ideals
of human life in human government, and of these
the greatest is liberty. No enduring system can be
established on the negation of liberty, even if it comes
with the temporary gift of good government. This
elementary fact needs no labouring with an English
audience.

To sum up therefore. Political democracy, as a
principle of human government, is in essence un-
assailable, and will continue to be the fundamental
political faith of all advanced peoples. But the time-
honoured institutions of democracy stand on a less
secure footing. Various important factors are making
for a change in the old organization. There is in the
first place the growing complication in the character
and functions of the modern state, which calls for a
far greater element of scientific expertness in its per-
sonnel. There is in the second place a far greater
mobilization of public opinion through the Press, the
kincma, and the thousand and one other forms of
publicity which to-day make the work of the states-
man much more difficult than before. Publicity is
becoming an almost greater evil than secret diplo-
macy was formerly. It gives a power to the Press and
to all forms of scaremongering which rivals that of
governments and becomes a grave menace to govern-
ment. Those who are in temporary command of pub-
lic opinion wield a power and an influence, both in
national and international affairs, which may seriously

DEMOCRACY 177

interfere with the efficiency of government and the
promotion of international goodwill. Against this
new invasion the old forms of democratic govern-
ment require reinforcement from the reasonable and
educated sections of the community. Universal suf-
frage has to be tempered with universal science. The
forces of science have to be mobilized against the
mob forces of publicity. This could best be done by
following up the precedent, already repeatedly tried
with success in recent years, of expert scientific com-
missions to deal with complicated national and inter-
national issues, which have to be removed from the
party or partisan arena. The scientific economic
expert should come to play in the modern state, and
in international relations, a part somewhat analogous
to that of the legal expert and the law court, and thus
ease the responsibility of government in matters with
which it is less fitted to deal. Already there is a strong
tendency among big industrial and economic interests
to cut out the government, and to seek the solution of
their troubles away from the political interference of
the government. The meaning of it all is that both
the organization and the functioning of the state
should become more scientific, impartial, business-
like, and less purely political in the old sense. The
scientific expert should come in as a new additional
organ of the modern democratic state.

Finally, the ideal of the abolition of war as an in-
strument of national policy deprives national govern-
ments of what has been their last refuge in the past ;
they can no longer appeal to this great weapon of

178 DEMOCRACY

kings, and must in future organize their resources on
a peace footing, and submit their quarrels to the
tribunal of the nations. The favourite old dodge of
avoiding internal trouble by embarking on foreign
adventure can no longer be resorted to. Deprived of
all means of external aggrandizement, the state be-
comes an organization for the peaceful self-develop-
ment and perfection of citizenship on a basis which
will more and more tend to be universal, and not
merely national. Its character will thus be profoundly
transformed, but the universal human ideals, which
have in the past suffered in the clash of national
egoisms and of war, will have freer scope and fuller
realization than before. The democratic ideal fits in
with the peaceful international regime of the future
and is in no real danger from it.

I have occupied your time largely with a discussion
of the changing institutions of democracy. But I wish
in conclusion to point out that democracy in the last
resort depends, not so much on machinery of govern-
ment, as on the spirit of a people, on its unexhausted
and growing fund of goodwill and understanding, on
its capacity for social magnanimity and unselfish
service. In proportion as this spiritual and scientific
humanism becomes diffused throughout all classes of
the nation, only in that proportion will the right
atmosphere for democracy exist. It will be largely the
function of the universities to foster this culture and
promote this high spirit of social service and under-
standing. It will be pre-eminently the task of the
universities to train the future leaders of democracy.

DEMOCRACY 179

Through humanism, through science, by the culture
of the spirit and the ideals of the higher life, the
universities will equip the coming generations for
their duties of leadership. The universities will thus
come to play an ever more important role in the life
of the nation, and will become the real spiritual home
of its leaders. The young men and women coming
from it will carry into national life and government
that indefinable something which is more precious
than all the organs and institutions of society. And
only in proportion as they do this will human self-
government come into its own.

INDEX

Abyssinia, 14, 24, 27, 44.

Act of Union, 97.

Africa: 'Africa for the Africans',
45, 49; 'Africa will still remain
Africa', 33-4; agriculture, 43,
81-3, 90, Africa and the Great
War, 24-6; Annual Conference
on African Problems, 68; an-
thropology in Africa, 86; camel
transport, 28; Christianity, 52-
4, 86 , civil servants, 54-5 , com-
munication and transport, 27-8 ;
education, 90; equal political
rights, 94-8 ; exploration, 4 bqq ;
political aspects of exploration,
22-3 , industrial development,
24; industrial segregation im-
practicable, 93-4; international
congresses, 22, 23 ; intoxicating
liquors, 90; labour, compulsory
or indentured, 45, 46; land
settlement, 67; land tenure and
cultivation, 80-3, 90; mandates,
889; missionary work, 323,
52-4, 85; medical missions, 53;
mines, 40-2; motor transport,
27-8 , native administration, 90,
102 ; Native Affairs Commission,
85; native migration, 65,90,99,
100; native policy, 7 3- 1 03 , native
political rights, 94-8 ; native
population, 59; native self-
government, 84, 901 ; native
tribal authority, 8690; natives,
characteristics of, 47, 756 ; par-
tition of Africa, 235 ; racial
problems, 30-1 ; railway com-
munication, 27 ; segregation, 92-
4, 98-103; settlement, 37-69;
slavery, 5, 12, 13, 16, 23, 45, 46,
77; taxation, 46, 80, 81, 82, 84,
89; water pollution, 90; white
settlement and employment, 45
55 63-9, 80-1, 99-101; and
native land rights, 55-60; see
also Livingstone, David.

British Africa, external trade,
31-2.

Central Africa, agricultural
advances in, 31.

East Africa, 29, 55-8, 62, 66,
67; Bntish policy in, 49; ex-
ternal trade, 31-2; settlement of,
43-4; white settlement, 50;
German East African campaign,
25; Governors of East African
Territories on European settle-
ment, 57-8.

North- West Africa, 27.
South Africa, 4 sqq., 60, 82-5,
88, 92, 94, 97, 98, 101, 141;
mining, 28-31; Scots in South
Africa, 3, 4, 7 , white population,
41 , Union of, 27, 39, 68.
South- West Africa, 27, 61.
West Africa, 54-8; external
trade of British West Africa,
31-2

Albert Edward, Lake, 21.
Albert Nyanza, Lake, 21, 27.
Andersson, 7.
Angola, 10, 12, 27, 29, 59.
Aruwimi, River, 21.
Aryans, 30

Asia and Europe, 73-4
Australian Institute of Tropical
Medicine, 61.

Bagirmi, 20.

Bahr el Ghazal, 20.

Baker, Sir Samuel, 14.

Bangweolo, Lake, 7, 17, 19, 22.

Bantu, the, 74, 75.

Barth, Henry, 7.

Bechuana, Livingstone's mission

at, 7.

Bechuanaland, 9.
Belgium, 24, 25.
Benguella, 19.
Berlin African Conference (1885),

23-

Bolshevism, 153, 175.
Borden, Sir Robert, 37.
Bruce, James, 7.
Brussels International African

Conference, 22.

182

INDEX

Bryce, Lord, 112.
Bukama, 27.
Bureaucracy, 174.
Burton, Sir Richard Francis, 13-
H-

Cameron, Lieut. Lovett, 19, 22.

Cape Colony, 28, 95, 97, 101.

Capetown-Alexandria route, 27.

Capetown-Francqui Railway com-
munication, 27.

Cecil, Lord, 141.

Chad, Lake, 7, 20.

Chaillu, Paul de, 53.

Chamberlain, Sir Austen, 127.

China, 74.

Chitambo, 19.

City-state, 172-3.

Commonwealth of Nations, 64.

Conference system, 119, 121, 122,
146-7.

Congo, the, 27, 29, 59.

Congo basin, 25, 27.

Congo, River, 17-18, 20, 21.

dimming, Gordon, 6.

Dawes Commission, 163.

De Beers, 40.

Democracy, 1 5 1-79 ; dependent on
the spirit of a people, 178; dis-
illusion over, 152 ; essentially un-
assailable, 176; excesses of, 170.

Diplomacy before the War, 120-2.

Disarmament, 143.

Egypt, 27.
Emm Pasha, 21.
Expert inquiry, 171.

Fascism, 153, 169, 175.

France, 24, 25 ; and the League of

Nations, 124-5.
Francqui, 27.
Freedom of the Seas, 130, 133, 134.

Galton, Francis, 7.

Germany, 24, 25, 44; and the

League of Nations, 142; see also

under Africa.

Glen Grey Act, 46, 78, 79, 82, 83.
Gondokoro, 14.
Gordon, Charles George, 21.
Government, difficulties of, 170-5.
Grant, James Augustus, 14.

Great Britain, 24.

Great War, the, 87; and Africa,

24-6.

Grey, Sir Edward, 121.
Guinea, Gulf of, 20.

Health in the tropics, 60-3.
Henderson, Mr., 125.
Hofmeyr, Jan, 79.
Hoover, President, 142, 143, 145.
Hughes, Charles E., 136.

India, 30, 32, 74.

International relations, 154-9, 165.

Itala, 19.

Italy, 153.

Japan, 74.

Johannesburg mines, 41.
Justice, 144.

Kafue, the, 43.
Kafue, River, n.
Kalahari, the, 8, 9, 10, 28.
Kasai, River, 10, 27.
Katanga, 18.
Katanga, the, 24, 29.
Katanga copper mines, 27, 29.
Kellogg Peace Pact, 122, 127, 129-

37, 142, 143, 146; violation of,

145.
Kenya, 27, 44, 5*1 5^, 58, 59, 61,

63-

Kenya, Mount, 7.
Khartoum, 21.
Kibebrassa Rapids, 15.
Kilimanjaro, 7, 44.
Kimberley mines, 40, 41.
Kirk, Sir John, 15, 16.
Kordofan, 20.
Krapf, 7, 14.
Kruger, President, 6.
Kwando, River, 10.

Laing, Alexander Gordon, 7.

Law, 166-7.

League of Nations, 13, 74, 107-37,
141-7; and international rela-
tions, 154-9; as institution for
world-peace, 108; change of
public opinion towards, 10910;
effect of criticism on, 115;
failure to establish it on a
military basis, 124-7; France

INDEX

183

and the League, 124-5; Ger-
many, 142; future tasks of the
League, 141-7; initial ridicule
of, 109; mandatories of, 88-9;
pacific methods, 123-4; still a
'grand experiment', 115-16; suc-
cess of, 112-13; United States
and the League, 124, 127-9,
135-7, 142.

Covenant: criticized as ideal-
istic, 116-17; establishes con-
ference system, 119; reasons for
its creation, 118; article no. x,
124; art. xvi (economic boycott),
125, 131, 134-6; art. xix, 144.
Optional clause, 142.
Protocol, 125-7.
Leopold, King, 22, 24.
Livingstone, David, 3-34. 43 ' anc *
African natives, 5; and slavery,
5, 12, 13, 16; and South Africa,
4 sqq.; and Stanley, 5, 6, 18, 21,
22; and Transvaal Boers, 6;
Livingstone's accuracy and
varied knowledge, 9 ; his Bechu-
ana mission, 7; British Consul
(1859), 14-15; his death, 19;
early training, 9; expeditions,
6 10, 1519; Mabotsa mis-
sion, remains of, 6; National
Memorial near Victoria Falls,

5, 12; his wife, 6, 16.
Lobito Bay Railway, 27.
Lualaba, River, 12, 17-21, 23.
Luapula, River, 17.

Luebo, 27.

Lugard, Lord, 57, 96.

Mabotsa, 6.

Mackenzie, Bishop, 16.

Makololo, the, n, 15.

Malayan Islands, 74.

Manyema country, 17.

Mashonaland, 8.

Meru, Mount, 44.

Milanje Mountains, 15.

Moero, Lake, 17.

Moffat family, 16.

Moffat, Mary (Mrs. Livingstone)

6, 16.

Mohammedanism, 52-3.
Monbuttoo country, 20.
Monomotapa, 8.
Morocco, 25.

Mountains of the Moon (Ruwen-

zori), 7, 21.
Vlurchison, Sir R., 15.
Murray, 10.

Murray, Professor Gilbert, 141.
Mwata Yanvo, chief, 19.

Nachtigal, Dr., 20.

Natal, 101.

National egoism, 164.

Nation-state, 173.

Naval conference, 142.

Near East, 74.

Neutrality, 129, 130, 133, 134, I45

146.

Ngami, Lake, 7, 8, 10.
Niger, River, 27.
Nigeria, 27.
Nile, River, 17-18, 21, 27; Upper,

20.

Nubia, 20.
Nyangwe, 17, 23.
Nyassa, 32.
Nyassa, Lake, 15-* 7-
Nyassaland, 29, 39, 56.
Nyoro country, 14.

Olivier, Lord, 45.
Ormsby-Gore Commission, 50.
Oswell, William Cotton, 10.

Pacific Pact, 136-7.

Park, Mungo, 7.

Passarge, Professor, 9.

Peace movement, the, 1 1 1 , 112.

Permanent Court of International

Justice, 1 66.
Political policy, 172.
Politicians, 160-2.
Pondoland, 101.
Portugal, 24.
Press, the, 159, 169, 176.
Public opinion, 159-64, 169, 170,

173, 176.
Publicity, 159, 169, 176.

Quelimane, n.

Rebman, 7, 14.
Red Sea, 27.
Rejaf, 27.
Religion, 166.
Reparation question, 162.

184

INDEX

Rhodes, Rt. Hon. Cecil John, 64,

65 ; his ideas and policies, 38-

43 ; Rhodesian settlement, 40 ;

African native policy, 78-80;

and equal political rights, 95, 97 ;

his will, 107; and world-peace,

107-8.

Rhodes scholarships, 107, 108.
Rhodesia, 27, 39-43, 61, 63;

Northern, 29, 31, 56.
Rohlfs, Dr., 20.
Rovuma, River, 15, 16, 17.
Royal Geographical Society, 14,

19.

Russia, 153, 174.
Ruwenzon, Mount (Mountains of

the Moon), 7, 21.

Sahara, 27, 28; Eastern, 20,

Western, 20.
St. Paul de Loando, 10.
Schwemfurth, Dr., 9, 20.
Schweitzer, Professor, 53.
Science, 167-9, J 77-
Semhki, River, 21.
Senegal, 27.
Sesheke, 10, 15.
Shire, River, 15, 16.
Shirwa, Lake, 15.
Shupanga, 16.
Sidgwick, Henry, 151-2.
Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, 151

79-

Sierra Leone, 27.

Somaliland, 14.

Speke, John I tanning, 14.

Stanley, Sir II. M , and Living-
stone, 5-6, 18, 21, 22; his ex-
plorations, 20-2.

Tanganyika, 12, 1 8, 19, 27, 44, 56,

59, 88, 89.

Tanganyika, Lake, 14, 17, 20.
Tete, 8, ii.
Timbuktu, 27, 28.
1 ranskeian Territories, 47.

Transvaal, the, 29, 42.
Tropics, the, and health, 60-3.

Uganda, 31, 54, 56-9, 88.

Uganda Railway, 43.

Ujiji, 18.

United States and the League of

Nations, 124, 127-9, i35~7, 142;

and neutrality, 133, 134.
Universities' Mission to Central

Africa, 15, 32.
Usambaras, 44.

Versailles, Peace of, 156, 157;
Congress of, 162.

Victoria Falls, 10, 11, 15; Living-
stone Memorial near, 5, 12.

Victoria Nyanza, Lake, 14, 20, 21,
27.

Vienna, Congress of, 162.

Wadai, 20.

Walrish Bay, 8.

War, renunciation of, 111-12, 129-
32; past, legality of, 113, 129;
future, conditions of, 113-14;
inevitable disappearance of, 114;
private and public, 131-3; war
cannot be effectively humanized,
146 ; as an instrument of national
policy, 155-8; and national
egoism, 164; abolition of, 177.

IVcltamchauuntr, 86.

Wilson, President Woodrow, 117,
134, 152, 165.

Witwatcrsrand, the, 29, 42.

World-peace, 107-37.

Young (Hilton) Commission, 48,
51, 66, 67, 95, 163.

Zambesi, River, 8, 10-12, 15, 16,

27.

Zanzibar, 32, 56.
Zimbabwe, 51, 76.
Zululand, 101.

PKINTFD IN GREAT IIRITAIN AT THE UNIVERSITY PRFSS, OXFORD
UY JOHN JOHNbON, PRINTER 1O THF UNIVERSITY

31 473